India Preaches against any Flex of Military Muscle in Outer Space

Two months after China's destruction of an aging weather satellite by a medium range ballistic missile, India's External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the Lok Sabha (Lower House) that it was incumbent upon nations to maintain outer space exclusively for peaceful purposes and guard it as the ''common, peaceful heritage of mankind''. ''The security and safety of assets in outer space is today of crucial importance for global economic and social development," he said.

China had destroyed their satellite in polar orbit on 11 January with a low tech kinetic impact and had increased the quantity of space debris in low earth orbit tremendously, Minister Mukherjee said. He said the Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed the test on January 23 this year, while reiterating China's commitment to the peaceful uses of outer space. Mukherjee said India had raised the issue with China during the visit of its Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing on February 11th to 14th this year. China's external affairs spokesman had stressed in response that it was against weaponisation of outer space and that their test was of purely technological and scientific significance and not directed against any country. ''The Indian Government believes that this consensus could be undermined by continuation of such testing or deployment of weapons in outer space,'' Mukherjee said.

To date no damage had been observed so far on any Indian satellite. The UN has thus far been ineffectually silent upon the issue of space weapons testing and the consequent creation of debris clouds in a height band inhabited by over 120 high-value satellites (about half of which are military surveillance and comms dedicated).