{"id":173440,"date":"2010-01-12T23:40:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T04:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"Gizmodo-5446622"},"modified":"2010-01-12T23:40:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T04:40:00","slug":"india-developing-kill-vehicle-to-knock-enemy-satellites-out-of-the-sky-satellites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/173440","title":{"rendered":"India Developing ‘Kill Vehicle’ to Knock Enemy Satellites Out of the Sky [Satellites]"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>With perennial foe Pakistan always teetering on the brink of political collapse and neighboring superpower China taking strides into space technology, India has announced that it is developing an exo-atmospheric “kill vehicle” that will knock enemy satellites out of orbit.<\/p>\n

The program was proudly announced as part of India’s ballistic missile defense program, a division of India’s Ministry of Defense. However, in a briefing last week defense officials admitted lots of work on the project is yet to be done. Like, almost all of it. The kill vehicle (read: missile of some kind) will be guided by a laser, which will lock onto the offending satellite and keep the kill vehicle on a solid interception course. Neither the laser nor the kill vehicle actually exists yet, but be forewarned: India will put a dent in your space capabilities at a time and place as yet undetermined.<\/p>\n

Of course, India isn’t the first state to dabble in space-based defenses or satellite-slaying technologies. Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative — the now infamous “Star Wars” — proposed to arm a series of ground- and space-based stations with interceptor missiles (for defensive purposes only, of course). In 2007 China brazenly launched a ground-based missile into the atmosphere to demonstrate its ability to destroy satellites, creating a mess of orbital debris when it blew apart an aging weather satellite. The U.S. also used a ship-based missile to incinerate one of its own spy satellites in 2008, as its decaying orbit was threatening to send it crashing down to Earth with toxic materials on board.<\/p>\n

So exactly whose satellites might India be protecting herself from? Pakistan, India’s most reliable nemesis, isn’t exactly running a robust space program. More likely the world’s largest democracy is a bit wary of the world’s largest military-minded single-party ruled “republic” right across the Himalayan range. Whatever the reasoning, putting weapons in space has never been a popular topic in the international community; we likely haven’t heard the last word on this. [Space<\/a>]<\/p>\n

<\/a>Popular Science is your wormhole to the future. Reporting on what’s new and what’s next in science and technology, we deliver the future now.<\/i><\/p>\n



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With perennial foe Pakistan always teetering on the brink of political collapse and neighboring superpower China taking strides into space technology, India has announced that it is developing an exo-atmospheric “kill vehicle” that will knock enemy satellites out of orbit. The program was proudly announced as part of India’s ballistic missile defense program, a division […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1736,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1736"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}