and PM Nawaz asked him the status of preparedness of Pakistan and (Mubarakmand) assured Prime Minister Nawaz that scientists were ready and Pakistan could go for its first nuclear test. On 30 May 1998, Ishfaq Ahmad cleared with the Prime Minister, and Mubarakmand led the very small team of academic scientists that supervised the country's plutonium fission weapon – codename Chagai-II. In 2005, Mubarakmand eulogised his memories in an interview with Hamid Mir's Capital Talk television show and said: Recalling Munir Ahmad Khan and PAEC's role and its relation to the atomic bomb project priority dispute, Mubarakmand later said that: Government work and political advocacy Space programme In 1990s, Mubarakmand took special initiatives in the advancement of the space program and led a team of engineers to successfully develop the Shaheen-I missile. He was the founding director of the National Defence Complex (NDC) bureau that initiated the work on the Shaheen-I and gathered support for the program. Necessary funding for the program was secured by the military. Mubarakmand oversaw the development of the solid-fuel rocket booster. Initiated in 1987 by the Pakistan Ministry of Defence in response to India's Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, Pakistan's spin-off missile program was aggressively pursued by Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 1993. The Shaheen-I missile was successfully test fired in 1999 by a team of engineers led by Mubarakmand. Key strategic weapon systems, such as the Babur and Ghaznavi missiles, were also built by his team. In 2008, Mubarakmand joined the Planning Commission of Pakistan where he strongly advocated for peaceful usage of their space program. In 2009, he revealed the work on Paksat-1R, the nation's first geostationary satellite that was launched in 2011. The satellite was described as being able to monitor agricultural programs, minerals programs and weather conditions and quoted that there were sufficient funds for the defence, nuclear and space programs. The satellite was launched in 2011 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in China. His relations with Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan often remained tense over several scientific issues. He sees Dr. Mubarakmand as "no authority over materials as he is an expert on electromagnetism." Thar Coal project In 2013, Mubarakmand assisted the Provincial Government of Balochistan in mineral extraction. He lobbied heavily for the implementation of the Thar coal project initiated by the Provincial Government of Sindh despite strong public criticism by Abdul Qadeer Khan, which described it as "intellectual