NASA astronaut Scott Kelly calls India 'shockingly polluted'

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: On sidelines of a brief media appearance along with US president Barack Obama at the White House, retired astronaut Scott Kelly said that the level of pollution in India and China is shocking.

Scott, who has spent a year in space, said that everything was vividly visible from up above.

"Seeing places like China and India, and the pollution that exists there almost all the time is quite shocking.''

"There was one day last summer, the summer of 2015, when I was in space I saw the eastern side of China was perfectly clear. And I'd never seen that before in all of my time in space, and I'd spent well over a year in space, total, at that point," he said.

"I could see all these cities that are - there's like over 200 cities in that part of China, with over a million people. And it was at dusk, and I could just, for the very first time, I was able to see them, and it was quite shocking," he added. 

"So it's interesting to see just how much of a negative impact we have on the environment, but also how quickly we can have a positive impact on it if we decide not to mention the atmosphere is very, very thin and scary-looking when you see it from space," he said.

(With PTI inputs)