Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – U.S. and French diplomats signed an agreement Tuesday in Washington to jointly monitor space debris that could damage satellites or manned spacecraft.
The statement of principles they signed is one of several the U.S. government is seeking with foreign countries as part of a new space security policy.
Under the policy, the U.S. military and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would participate with foreign partners in monitoring space debris to save costs for each of them.
U.S. radars watch the orbital paths of about 22,000 manufactured items that fell from spacecraft. Hundreds of thousands of objects too small to be observed are likely to be up in space, according to military officials.
About a quarter of the debris came from a January 2007 test of a missile system by the Chinese military. They shot down one of their own weather satellites to determine whether their missiles could destroy enemy satellites in a war.
Another quarter of the debris came from a February 2009 collision between an outdated Russian satellite and a commercial U.S. satellite made by Iridium Communications, Inc.
Many of the orbiting objects could inflict serious and perhaps catastrophic damage to satellites or spacecraft in a collision, according to space experts.
The agreement signed Tuesday by French Defense Minister Alain Juppe and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates follows an earlier agreement with the government of Australia last year.
The statement of principles signed by the Australian government says it is intended “to support the United States space surveillance network.”
U.S. military officials decided that as space travel becomes more common and the debris grows, an international effort to monitor dangerous orbiting objects is more practical than doing it alone.
About 60 countries and public-private joint ventures operate roughly 1,100 satellites.
After signing the “Space Situational Awareness Partnership,” Juppe discussed unrelated military issues with Gates at the Pentagon.
The space debris agreement is only one part of a U.S. Air Force program to upgrade its Space Surveillance System for tracking orbiting objects.
On Jan. 26, the Air Force gave two contracts for $107 million each to American defense contractors Raytheon Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. for new satellite collision warning systems.
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