BY : IANS

India, for the first time on Wednesday, test-fired from a defence base in Orissa its submarine-launched ballistic missile
(SLBM) K-15 from a land-based launcher, defence sources said.

It was test-fired successfully from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur in the district of Balasore, about 230 km from state capital Bhubaneswar.

The missile has two stages fitted into its half-metre-wide body. It can carry a payload up to one tonne and has a highest range of 700 km.

The missile had earlier undergone few tests in an underwater platform. The Wednesday test was intended to check speed, trajectory, azimuth and other parameters of the missile.

The K-15 missile has a length of around 11 metres, larger than the 8.5-metre-long Prithvi short-range ballistic missile but smaller than the 15-metre-long Agni-1 ballistic missile.

The district administration evacuated temporarily about 3,010 people from about five villages located within the two-km radius of the defence base hours before the test in the area, district collector A C Padhiary said.