You can’t exactly see it from down here on Earth, but there’s a whole lot of junk floating around in the space around our planet. The vast majority of it is man-made, including pieces of satellites, entire defunct spacecraft, and bits and pieces of past space missions. Now, thanks to a hilariously bad decision by India, there’s even more of it.

In a new test of its growing space might, India decided to launch a missile to shoot down one of its own satellites. The country’s thinking was that the demonstration would be a message to the world that India is now “a major space power.” In reality the test created hundreds of pieces of space debris that now threaten the safety of future missions, and might even pose a danger to astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

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