Minutes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s big announcement that India has become the fourth country in the world to become a space power capable of taking out an enemy satellite in space, the MEA clarified that the Mission Shakti operation was not directed against any country.

According to government sources, the satellite which was hit was a micro-satellite launched by the ISRO on January 24 this year.

Advertisement

In the operation, the indigenously-built anti-satellite ASAT missile successfully destroyed a target satellite in the Low Earth Orbit (LWO), the PM announced.

Read | Mission Shakti a major success, India now an elite space power: PM Modi

Though the message was clear to all of India’s adversaries, the PM assured the global community that the technology will not be used “against anyone”.

“This (technology) is to strengthen the defence of a fast-growing India. This test does not violate any international law or treaty. We are against arms race in space,” the PM stressed.

“Our objective is to ensure the security of the 130 crore people of our country. Thus a powerful India is necessary for peace. We do not intend to create an atmosphere of war,” he added.

The Ministry of External Affairs in its statement said that India’s space capabilities do not threaten any country nor are they directed against anyone.

Reiterating PM Modi’s words, the MEA said the government was committed to ensuring the country’s national security interests and is alert to threats from emerging technologies.

The MEA further said the capability achieved through the Anti-Satellite missile test provides credible deterrence against threats to India’s growing space-based assets from long-range missiles and proliferation in the types and numbers of missiles.

Soon after the achievement, DRDO chairman G Satheesh Reddy told news agency ANI, “We have mastered anti-satellite capability and we have today shown that we can hit satellites at long ranges with a few centimetres accuracy”.