DRDO Facility Founded by Kalam Developed Mission Shakti Missile
The DRDO facility in the outskirts of Hyderabad was established by former President APJ Abdul Kalam in 1988.
Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) facility in Hyderabad developed the Anti-Satellite Missile System (ASAT) used by DRDO on Wednesday, 27 March to test fire on a low-orbit Indian satellite.
PM Modi on Wednesday announced that India had demonstrated anti-satellite missile capability by shooting down a live satellite. He labelled it a “rare achievement” that puts the country in an exclusive club of space super powers.
The mission was codenamed 'Mission Shakti'.
“This technology has been in development for some time now, some background of Ballistic Defense Missile (BDM) was already pre-existing,” a DRDO official told The News Minute.
The official added that the satellite shot down was launched specifically for the purpose of this ASAT test, adding that the debris path of the satellite will be officially shared later.
The official also said that the mission was carried out as a "part of technology development", when asked if the ASAT was deployed to protect India from enemy satellites
ISRO, however, was not involved in the mission, the report said. "This is not an ISRO activity, so ISRO has no comment to offer. We are not involved in this activity and so we have no knowledge," the report quoted Vivek Singh, director, media and public relations for ISRO, as saying.
(With inputs from The News Minute)
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