After NASA’s comment on Mission Shakti, Asaduddin Owaisi says ‘soon Modi will address about Alien Life’

On Tuesday, NASA chief Jim Bridenstine had branded India's destruction of one of its satellites a "terrible thing" that had created 400 pieces of orbital debris and led to new dangers for astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

On Tuesday, NASA chief Jim Bridenstine had branded India's destruction of one of its satellites a "terrible thing" that had created 400 pieces of orbital debris and led to new dangers for astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

NEW DELHI: Hours after the head of NASA confirmed that India’s anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test in lower earth orbit created debris, endangering the International Space Station (ISS), Asaduddin Owaisi took a jibe on PM Narendra Modi saying “very soon Modi will address about Alien Life.” Owaisi took on Twitter and wrote, “NASA says Terrible Thing I am sure PMO India will call them Anti National & supporters of ..... very soon Modi will address about Alien Life.......” Last week, India carried out Mission Shakti, in which it successfully targeted a low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite. Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed its success as "an unprecedented achievement" that makes India "a space power." On Tuesday, NASA chief Jim Bridenstine had branded India's destruction of one of its satellites a "terrible thing" that had created 400 pieces of orbital debris and led to new dangers for astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Jim Bridenstine was addressing employees of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration five days after India shot down a low-orbiting satellite in a missile test to prove it was among the world's advanced space powers. Not all of the pieces were big enough to track, Bridenstine explained. "What we are tracking right now, objects big enough to track, we're talking about 10 centimeters (six inches) or bigger, about 60 pieces have been tracked," he said. That includes about 10,000 pieces of space debris, of which nearly 3,000 were created by a single event: a Chinese anti-satellite test in 2007 at 530 miles from the surface. "At the end of the day we need to be clear with everybody in the world, we're the only agency in the federal government that has human lives at stake here. And it is not acceptable for us to allow people to create orbital debris fields that put at risk our people," he said. Bridenstine said while the risk of the ISS went up 44 per cent, the astronauts are still safe. "The International Space Station is still safe. If we need to manoeuvre it, we will. The probability of that I think is low. But at the end of the day we have to be clear also that these activities are not sustainable or compatible with human spaceflight," Bridenstine said. (agency inputs)