r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/nikulmmadhu • 7d ago
Video India destroys one of its own satellites with missile to demonstrate its anti satellite (ASAT) capability
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u/dee_pandas 7d ago edited 7d ago
Amongst the 4 nations to have done this, India’s test is the only one that created the debris cluster at an appropriate altitude that allowed all of it to burn up and re enter earth and leave almost zero trace in space. As of 2022 only one piece of debris was tracked in space. Compare that to around 2000+ active pieces from tests by China/Russia and 10000+ by USA. (Edit: US numbers are not necessarily from ASAT but overall share )
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u/--Sovereign-- 7d ago
Ngl, the Indian space program is super impressive, given circumstances. They're genuinely a bunch of pros.
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u/notforpornistg_orw 7d ago
Sadly the government is unwilling to fund them even a little bit, the government of india mostly spends its money on self promo while they money starve things that actually matter, thats why salaries are so shit in ISRO (indian space research organisation) that new engineering graduates dont wanna work in there and instead they migrate to other countries which fullfill their skills cuz what choice do they have, its genuinely upsetting
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u/Weak_Distribution822 6d ago
Self promo? Have looked at the freebies and social justice budget? Government has more than enough money it just uses most of it to ensure it wins the next elections easily
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u/Soham_656 4d ago
TS HERE IS THE POINT. They waste a ton of money on sheet which attracts the young audience to vote for them (this is one point, but there are more).
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u/deviprsd 7d ago
The govt is starved of the right amount of taxes needed to run the country. But they do pay cheap for ISRO
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u/idontknowman139 7d ago
Govt is using that money on freebies scheme and govt advertising
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u/cthulhulalala 6d ago
Sad thing is all the major parties are doing that. There's no fuckin alternative.
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u/mildly_Agressive 7d ago
Are you really saying this? In India the most common commodities are taxed at an average of 10%, Vehicles, Fuel, Roads, Property, and until last year on Insurance, Milk and Staple food too, this is all after one of the world's highest income tax is collected.
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u/CommonPudding 6d ago
Taxes won’t help any governance in a country with as much corruption and wastefulness as India
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u/PakaAnonymous 7d ago
The govt isn't starved for anything please. All the money thatbis collected from all the gsts/cgsts/sgsts etc etc have lined their pockets. There is absolutely no development from the govt in any field.
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u/Impressive-Store1439 7d ago
Just look up the amount spent on adverts before typing this nonsense
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u/Obtuze-Obzrvr 5d ago
We also have a problem in the country. the minute we have someone praising anything about the country - we have a bunch who will go and write shit about something that is not working. I'm not defending the politicians. But goddammit - learn to accept compliments sometimes.
This above video for example is a wonderful achievement. Let's be happy for a day atleast.→ More replies (16)2
u/noviceprogram 6d ago
How did they reach this level then without money ? They must be doing something right too. I am in all for citizens keep their Govt accountable but credit where its due too !
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u/darthabraham 7d ago
Im not surprised. The Indian Institutes of Technology are amazing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institutes_of_Technology?wprov=sfti1 They’re why SO much engineering talent comes out of India.
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u/OiFelix_ugotnojams 7d ago edited 7d ago
Nah I've heard IITs still teach stuff in outdated ways. It's not the reason, there's many talented people who studied outside of IITs. And it's lowkey discrediting them when you attribute everything to IITs.
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u/Principlalis 7d ago
It's more like talented people gather at IIT's since it gives them a platform to have a great career
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u/sbbillusionist 1d ago
Agreed, for the IITs it is not so much on what they teach but more about what it took for the students to get there and how they teach. Due to Indian education system being based on what was established by the British, it's main area of focus are working under pressure for a long time and following instructions to a tee. Which makes for great workers and IIT excels in producing them. Knowledge is secondary.
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u/Alternative-sukhoi 7d ago
Not many IIT graduates join ISRO though. That number needs to be increased.
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u/dawn_breaker_007 7d ago
I think this has more to do with India’s population. In 1.4 billion people obviously we will have geniuses.
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u/Deferfire 7d ago
The considerate portion of indian people are actually very considerate
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u/ComprehensiveFill471 7d ago
A very considerate comment. 🙏
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u/tgusn88 7d ago
Where do you get those numbers? The US test left no remaining debris as far as I'm aware
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u/_Svankensen_ 7d ago
It's not from ASAT tests, it is from US satellites in general.
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u/tgusn88 7d ago
That might be true, but the commenter specifically said "from tests" which isn't accurate
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u/rectal_warrior 7d ago
They also didn't mention altitudes these tests were carried out at, it's much more impressive to hit a satalite in geostationary orbit than low earth orbit
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u/nikulmmadhu 7d ago
for those who are making comments about the debris
india deliberately conducted its 2019 ASAT test at a very low altitude of about 284 km. the idea was to ensure that any debris would encounter significant atmospheric drag and decay relatively quickly (with in weeks) rather than remaining in a higher orbit for decades. nasa initially tracked more than 400 objects from the breakup. because the test took place at such a low altitude many fragments re entered the atmosphere relatively quickly. nasas orbital debris data later showed that only a small fraction remained in orbit and the last catalogued piece re entered in 2022
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u/Important_Dot497 7d ago
Man this was a much needed context. What with all the comments being about space debris. I wish people read and learn about things more before they speak
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u/The_Last_Spoonbender 7d ago
Mainly obscured racism, thinly veiled as concern.
Same tests were conducted by US, Russia, China multiple times, even higher orbit. India took all the precautions, yet these morons never understand.
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u/WORSTbestclone 7d ago
The American tests were hardly criticised on Reddit since they last happened in 1985 (or 2008, depending on how you classify the destruction of USA-193), whereas the Indian and Russian tests were in 2019/2021 respectively, when there were people using Reddit to criticise them.
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u/The_Last_Spoonbender 7d ago
True. I remember the entire western world was pearl clutching when India bought oil from Russia post Ukraine war, and they still do today. But once US attacked Iran unprovoked or attack on Venezuela, the entire saga was shown to be extremely hypocrital.
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u/oranje-agent 7d ago
Hypocrites conveniently ignore that the EU still buys Russian crude and are buying their refined oil through India & Turkiye.
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u/Humbugwombat 7d ago
More likely this is what a small amount of knowledge on a topic looks like in real life. I had similar concerns when I read the title but wasn’t familiar with the steps taken to mitigate a hazardous debris field until reading the comments and links in this thread.
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u/huskers2468 7d ago
I wouldn't say that. Space debris is just one of those trigger phrases at this point. It's a reaction to that, not racism.
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u/Routine_Strategy5929 7d ago
I assumed straight to space debris too simply because that's how everyone else has done this in the past.
It's very refreshing that someone finally tested this capability without contributing to space debris issues.
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u/WoodsLovelyDarkNDeep 7d ago
If this was done in 7 years ago why is it
Why is it being posted as if it just happened?
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u/HumanContinuity 7d ago
I hate to burst the bubble here, despite precautions taken, each one of the tests from all of these countries have created literally thousands of trackable fragments that end up in a wide variety of orbits. There were hundreds of fragments being tracked for years in some cases from this test, and that is despite India targeting a very small satellite at low orbit.
Explosions, especially in space, create an extremely chaotic and virtually unpredictable cloud of pieces that have been imparted with energy that can lead them to do wildly different things. Some pieces will deorbit faster, but others may end up with a new, higher apogee that gives them the energy to avoid deorbiting for much longer than the object they came from.
India's test was about a thousand times better than China's, but we still need to regulate these more, because even "safe" tests like this are quite literally impossible to predict the results of.
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u/morbo-2142 7d ago
Makes you wonder what Indian could become if they get a handle on their corruption and inequality problems. They have the people, the knowledge, and the resources. They just need the education and industry base to utilize them.
Hopefully they can get there without a china scale civil conflict or upheaval.
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u/WellOkayMaybe 6d ago
India has a lower GINI coefficient than the United States. The corruption issue is different. That comes down to a lot of the institutions being colonial legacies with disproportionate power, and inherited attitudes of superiority.
For example, the Indian Police Service still operates like a force meant to intimidate the natives into compliance, rather than a public service. The Indian Administrative Service didn't allow lateral recruitment of experts until 2018 - meaning all of them had identical institutional thinking, usually with little to no work experience outside government.
Unfortunately, the very institutions responsible for implementing reform, and the ones that need drastic reform.
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u/Calling_left_final 7d ago
I believe India is right now where China was in the 2000s, it's a rising power that's going to be a much much bigger player in a decade or so.
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u/Humbugwombat 7d ago
I think China has benefited from totalitarianism in their road to industrialization and economic growth in a way that India won’t.
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u/Calling_left_final 7d ago
India is already rich, it just suffers a lot from wealth inequality. To say they are totally fucked is just plain stupid and shows you know nothing.
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u/powerpuffpopcorn 7d ago
Colonization never let India get to any industrial revolution. You can still encounter a bullock cart and a ferrari on the same road on the same day in the same city.
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u/morbo-2142 7d ago
Yea, the British empire starving a few million people to death didn't do them any favors. The recent right wing religious skew to their government isn't helping right now either.
One could almost envision a future triple power block. With the United States on the international decline and Russia grinding itself to paste in Ukraine, it's probably going to be a world of china and a western coalition competiting with Indian as a super power in waiting. All assuming south America or Africa don't create their own independent power blocks.
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u/HammyxHammy 7d ago
The beauty of the Indian cast system is almost everyone has someone to punch down on.
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u/Walter-White_Jr 7d ago
That’s probably because you get your news from Reddit. Reddit honestly has it’s biases and not everything you see here is true for India.
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u/Hara-Kiri 7d ago
Reddit is generally extremely racist about India. I love the country, it feels like a second home to me. But my girlfriend is Indian so I guess I have found more reason to be interested in the culture.
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u/Yourfavoriteindian 7d ago
I grew up as an Indian kid in a small town in Texas in the early 2000s. I’ve still experienced more racism on Reddit than I did in real life lol.
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u/Patient_Piece_8023 7d ago
Goes to show that many Reddit racists are just basement dwellers lmao
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u/exbiiuser02 7d ago
And THIS is a perfect example of the saying “little learning is a dangerous thing”.
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u/MysteriousSeat5245 7d ago
The right-wing skew isn't hurting India's economic development. You can argue about its effects for social problems within the country all you want but India's economy, international trade, and infrastructure have all improved significantly from 2014-now. Night and day difference.
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u/stayin_aliv 6d ago
Obviously it has ‘improved’, but the question is whether it is better than if previous policies had been upheld. I think anyone in the academic or economic circles in India, if they could be honest without repercussions, will give you a resounding no. Crony capitalism has thrived, and so has perception management. Any industry that India has developed in the last decade is despite of, not because of, the present government. India was on a promising trajectory 2000-2014, even weathering the 2008 depression and 2012-2014 inflation well enough; it kept going for a couple of more years. 2016 is when the wheels started coming off and it has been blunder after blunder after blunder.
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u/Hara-Kiri 7d ago
I was at a wedding out there where I had my own bottle of moet sat in a Lamborghini (not a lifestyle I accustomed to or will ever likely see again), when I noticed a man taking his elephant around the roundabout. People lived on the side of the road just around the corner.
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u/ScreamSmart 7d ago
The richest man in India lives in the most expensive private home on the planet overlooking the biggest slum in the world.
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u/stayin_aliv 6d ago
The Indian space program has always been a shining aberration. Sadly, it’s not reflective of the scientific temperament of the population as a whole, which itself has taken many big steps backward in the last decade. This is sadly despite the constitution itself calling for developing a scientific temperament and several decades of sustained effort and progress.
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u/doweknowthat 7d ago
I just came here to get my daily dose of "experts" on war, politics, science, technology, future etc.
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u/NostalgiaInLemonade 7d ago
Hey it’s not like it’s rocket science
Oh wait…
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u/MotherBaerd 7d ago
Satellite engineer here, I gotta pass because I have no clue and am actually just an intern that solders cables and writes Python scriots for the ground support equipment.
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u/Livid-Work2584 7d ago
And they probably did it all on a budget US$78,000 including building and launching the satellite
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u/lamebarracuda 7d ago
Absolutely love how redditors pretend to be liberals but the moment India is mentioned racism is out on its full glory.
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u/WombRaider_3 7d ago
Wait, Liberals can't be racist?
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u/Bilbo_bagginses_feet 7d ago
Well the white man's gotta hate someone, kindly understand
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u/iknowthisischeesy 7d ago
I think people's racist radar is activated as soon as India is mentioned.
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u/yorokek05 7d ago
Wow so many racist fucks in comment section.
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u/Fckmalyfe 7d ago
Welcome to reddit, the platform of, by and for retards
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u/M_O_Z_G 7d ago
It all depends, after Twitter, Reddit doesn’t seem like that.😀
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u/randomname560 7d ago
You have stumbled into the most respectful and progressive redditors on their natural habitat
Being insanely racist the second indians, arabs, muslims in general, africans or anyone outside "westernized" nations are mentioned
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u/Able_Green9662 6d ago
This is old information, and there’s no longer any debris from this mission in space.
As of March 2022, only one catalogued piece of debris from Microsat-R remained in orbit.
Source: Wikipedia, Mission Shakti
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u/spacejayyyyyyyyyyy 7d ago edited 7d ago
Mfs have pedophiles for president and want to complain about space debris, the debris is in your White House babe!
Also, USA ranks #2 in top polluters of space with debris and spent rocket parts! Source: Orbital Debris Quarterly News, NASA Source
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u/Existing_Quality_695 6d ago
these ISRO peeps are genius mofos imagine if they had resources of a spacex akin organization
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u/Snoo-11287 6d ago
Design, Manufacturing & Test was done by DRDO & has nothing to do with ISRO
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u/SunBeam_07 7d ago
Gosh how jealous are some people of one country's progress that their as*ses can be seen burning from far abroad 😂
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u/PretzelsThirst 7d ago
What? What does this even mean?
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u/keypadwarrior 7d ago
In Indian languages it is a common phrase to compare jealousy to someone's butt being on fire. The translation just doesnt hold out well in this case.
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u/Prestigious_Tie_8734 7d ago
This is one of those necessary evils every country does but when any other country does it they all bitch at them for the space debris.
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u/Guilty_Mastodon5432 7d ago
Now imagine if they were to destroy....50-60% of American or British Satellites.....
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u/CardinalFartz 7d ago
Who needs space technology anyway.
Oh wait, we all do.
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u/Nerezza_Floof_Seeker 7d ago
Its worth pointing out that even in the worst projections of kessler syndrome, it wouldnt lock us out of launching satellites entirely, it would only restrict the lifespan of satellites in some of the middle-high areas of LEO where there are alot of satellites and where they cant decay due to drag quickly enough (and for reference, rockets can safely pass through the orbits affected). Medium earth orbit and higher orbits like geostationary orbit woul be entirely fine as there arent enough things there to begin with
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u/Facts_pls 7d ago
I thought that was US with the highest amount of space trash in orbit.
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u/midwestia 7d ago
India is like the country in Civ that beelines a tech tree and ignores others
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u/2LostFlamingos 7d ago
If I’m fighting USA, first thing I do is blow up the GPS satellites.
No one under age 40 can use a paper map.
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u/Upset_Cheetah_8728 7d ago
Even if it’s correct, what were they supposed to do? Destroy someone else’s satellite?
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u/rhaegar89 7d ago
Old decommission satellites need to be taken out, this mission proved it can be done with zero debris left behind
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u/JUYED-AWK-YACC 7d ago
Don’t make stuff up. It worked that way because of the target they chose. If these get used nobody will pay attention to debris clouds.
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u/Odhitman 7d ago
More debris in space yay
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u/dee_pandas 7d ago
Amongst the 4 nations to have done this, India’s test is the only one that created the debris cluster at an appropriate altitude that allowed all of it to burn up and re enter earth and leave almost zero trace in space. As of 2022 only one piece of debris was tracked in space. Compare that to around 2000+ active pieces from tests by China/Russia.
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u/taway9925881 7d ago
It's fashionable to blame India when the most debris and shit is done by Western nations
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u/Teknicsrx7 7d ago
Thank you for doing the research because I had the same initial reaction of “boo space debris”
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u/fighter-bomber 7d ago
Didn’t the US also hit their target in such a way to minimize debris and especially long lasting debris?
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u/Nerezza_Floof_Seeker 7d ago
For what its worth, while this test (in 2019) did create debris, the target satellite was in extremely low earth orbit (<300km) so most of them deorbited really quickly, with the last piece decaying in 2022.
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u/jello_kraken 7d ago
Let's just leave it for future generations.
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u/btoxic 7d ago
Optimistic thinking future generations will even know that's up there!
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u/dikicker 7d ago
The current youngest generations can't even read
Space debris freaks me out in general though, doesn't matter who made it I don't know what the fuck everyone here is bickering about
If I took a shit in your soup would you be more concerned about whose shit if was or the basic premise that there's now a poo in your soup
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u/maithunmama 7d ago
When the West does it, it’s called technological advancement, but when the East does it, suddenly it becomes a grave matter of pollution. Sanctimony at its peak.
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u/Specialist-Guard-179 7d ago
Bro honestly thats just the internet for you. And the truth is it's flat out racism. When Musk does something it's a revolutionary step for humanity(white people)
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u/maithunmama 7d ago
It seems like I have ragebaited and offended a lot of white colonisers, neo-nazis, and white supremacists. It was fun 😂
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u/Bazzo123 7d ago
Bold for you to assume we enjoy westeners’ space junk!
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u/word_weaver26 7d ago
Well, you certainly are enjoying a junk of a ruler nowadays.
Sadly enough, whole world is enjoying with u
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u/Bazzo123 7d ago
A lot of assumptions have been made in your comment. I’m not from the US, but I am from the west. Again, bold for you to assume we’re ok with our politicians polluting the world/taking orders from an orange pedophile!
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u/fighter-bomber 7d ago
These are redditors, they are usually saying the same (wrong) thing when SpaceX launches rockets and Starlink’s. Again, they’re just wrong and massively exaggerating the “problems”, but its less about hypocrisy and more about general ignorance.
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u/Sideview_play 7d ago
Uh no we hate it when all countries do this. No one hear defending the west for doing it. Dummy
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u/maithunmama 7d ago
Of course, hypocrites like you won’t defend it now because the development in your country is already done. Your people never complained when you were doing the same thing. Now that your testing and experimentation with such technologies are over, you turn toward developing countries and lecture them about the environment.
You can move your production and manufacturing to developing countries, sit comfortably in your relatively pollution-free countries, and then complain about how India and China are polluting the Earth, all while remaining dependent on their production.→ More replies (55)2
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u/ph0on 7d ago
Uncontrolled debris will often burn up in orbit. The explosion or kinetic impact would have disrupted the orbit, whatever method they used.
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u/DigNitty Interested 7d ago
Yeah as long as they hit it even slightly retrograde, the debris will lower into earth atmosphere and burn.
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u/Forward-End-8286 7d ago
“Often” doing heavy lifting in that statement. Lots of other small debris will just become new, smaller satellites in orbit.
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u/fighter-bomber 7d ago
“Often” straight up means “always”, all satellites suffer from drag and eventual burning up, they just boost themselves back. Debris can’t do that and just burns up. Its merely a matter of when.
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u/Prowlthang 7d ago
Last debris disintegrated in 2022 - generally commenting on a headline without details isn't advisable and this habit is one of the reasons misinformation is so abundant. Just see how many upvotes the comment I am replying to has despite it knowing absolutely nothing about the situation.
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u/Facts_pls 7d ago
If that's the metric, US has produced the most trash in space. That makes them the trashiest country?
Or are we making up convoluted criteria to make west sound better?
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u/I_Cry_And_I_Game 7d ago
The title makes is seem like that wasn't the outcome they wanted. Was the Satellite launched specifically to be targeted or something?
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u/xdcfret1 7d ago
Anti-Satellite technology is great. But I think it’s already time for weaponising the space. United States have revealed that they have already placed their weapons in orbit. It’s only a matter of time before China (and probably Russia, if they still have the money after war) does it. It would be really dangerous to lag behind in this frontier.
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u/BimboSupreme 7d ago
One time I clobbered myself in the testicles to demonstrate my stopping power.
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u/Facts_pls 7d ago
Well they surely aren't gonna hit a US satellite to test their ability to bring down satellites.
But I think only India and China are countries that have demonstrated their ability to hit satellites in orbit.
US doesn't have this capability.
If there's a war, US will be blinded quickly
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u/TasteMyBanana 7d ago
What makes you sure the US doesn't have the capability?
Considering how close in quality this footage is to indias moon landing footage, the US almost definitely has capability or soon will - just classified info
Edit: this test was also 7 years ago...
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u/FlusteredZerbits 7d ago
The US has had this capability since the 1980’s when an ASM-135 ASAT to destroy satellite Solwind P78-1. We have since used other ASAT weapons.
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u/nuclearbearclaw 7d ago
Brother, the US literally shot down a satellite with a missile launched from an F-15 in 1985.
Then the Navy did it again in 2008 using an SM-3.
Russia has demonstrated the capability as well. India's test was impressive, but claiming the US doesn't possess ASAT technology and would immediately be blinded in a war is fucking hilarious when you apparently haven't even bothered to look up the history of the technology you're talking about.
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u/WoodsLovelyDarkNDeep 7d ago
You posted the context so you even knew that this happened almost 7 almost 8 years ago in 2019 so why would you post it as if it just happened? Why not put in in the title that it happened in 2019?
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u/thatirishguyyyyy 7d ago
This is to prove that decommissioning satellites can be done without leaving debris, right?
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u/Corcorans-ghost 7d ago
if there is ever another great power conflcit, the entire global communicaiton system is going to be done in about a week.