USAF: Space Debris Challenges

11/5/2009 - WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- The chief of U.S. Strategic Command wants better tools for protecting against threats from space debris -- an estimated 20,000 pieces of manmade material orbiting around the planet.

Gen. Kevin P. Chilton laid out what he described as his "wish list" Nov. 4, emphasizing the importance of being able to predict collisions between debris and valuable satellites.

Given the scarce number of personnel tasked with carrying out this mission, "we are decades behind where we should be, in my view," General Chilton said in a speech at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb.

The collision in February of an American and Russian satellite changed an assumption underlying the use of space. General Chilton called the collision between the Iridium and Kosmos satellites the "seminal event" of the year for STRATCOM.

"The big space theory, like the big sky theory, kind of came to a close when that happened -- the thought that we wouldn't have to pay attention to the movement of every satellite up there because there's so much space up there and such a low probability that they'll run into each other," he said.

Those working in the field likely never bought into the theory that a collision was unlikely, the general said, and the event drove home the reality to those responsible for budgeting.

"It's amazing what one collision will do to the resource spigot," he said. "Once that happened, we started to see some resources start to flow in the right directions and some creative thinking going on to improve our ability to predict collisions between the 800 satellites that we care about up there that are active and the more than 20,000 pieces of total debris." More here...