Re. the orbit, note that this was a test in LEO, at 300 km orbit; all the debris will, in relatively short order, be de-orbited. [2]
While I will not indulge in the whataboutism of CN & USA conducting these, one potential strategic reason for India to test was to ensure a their perspective was heard at the (then) upcoming discussions on the "Space Peace Treaty" [3]. It's tempting to say such symbols of act & intent do not matter, but they force others to take you seriously & engage with you. India was excluded from the NSG and many other such programs in the past.
FWIW, please do not trivialize the realities & complexities of geopolitics by simplistic moral grand-standing. While undesirable, there were real domestic & international reasons to conduct the test. To treat such a decision as mere posturing, or some sort of crude symbolism, ignores the context within which such decisions are taken, and presumes that the technocrats who took these decisions did so unmindful of the consequences.
The really worrisome thing about this is that they seemingly just had to do their test vs a polar orbit/highly inclined orbit satellite. The odds of killing something in a polar orbit in the Iridium NeXT satellite network are non-zero. This is because the Iridium satellite orbits and the debris orbits all converge over the poles.
There's a lot of important non telecom related things that are in highly inclined orbits, such as earth observation satellites.
Highly inclined orbits don't converge any more than any other orbits converge. Orbits with low inclinations also intersect just as often assuming they shifted slightly. There isn't anything special about high or low inclinations, it just tells you what the Earth is doing in respect to the satellite.
moh_maya|6 years ago
Re. the orbit, note that this was a test in LEO, at 300 km orbit; all the debris will, in relatively short order, be de-orbited. [2]
While I will not indulge in the whataboutism of CN & USA conducting these, one potential strategic reason for India to test was to ensure a their perspective was heard at the (then) upcoming discussions on the "Space Peace Treaty" [3]. It's tempting to say such symbols of act & intent do not matter, but they force others to take you seriously & engage with you. India was excluded from the NSG and many other such programs in the past.
FWIW, please do not trivialize the realities & complexities of geopolitics by simplistic moral grand-standing. While undesirable, there were real domestic & international reasons to conduct the test. To treat such a decision as mere posturing, or some sort of crude symbolism, ignores the context within which such decisions are taken, and presumes that the technocrats who took these decisions did so unmindful of the consequences.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19590936 [2] https://in.reuters.com/article/us-india-satellite/india-says... [3] https://phys.org/news/2019-03-space-peace-treaty-consensus.h...
walrus01|6 years ago
There's a lot of important non telecom related things that are in highly inclined orbits, such as earth observation satellites.
russdill|6 years ago
basicplus2|6 years ago
swiley|6 years ago
1) think that was a good idea
and
2) get away with it