[FPSPACE] University of British Columbia Space Report: 30 Nations have ASAT capability; 35 million pieces of space debris in Earth orbit

[pjp]

>From Agency France Presse:

 

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Security_life_threatened_by_space_j_09152007.ht
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Security, life threatened by space junk, weapons: report

 

Human security and technologies from cell phones to weather forecasts are
more at risk than ever from anti-satellite weapons and space junk, said a
research report released Friday.

An anti-satellite test by China in January, and increased US opposition to
restrictions on space weapons, were cited as two main global threats by
"Space Security 2007," the fourth annual report by the Space Security Index.

"The dismantling of the space sanctuary for communications satellites, and
weather satellites, and those other divides on which the modern economy
depends so greatly, thereby making it impossible to utilize those devices,
would be negative to every single person in the world," said report
co-author Thomas Graham.

"You wouldn't be able to have cell phones, Blackberries, pagers, the kind of
television you have now," Graham told AFP in a telephone interview from
Virginia, warning that 30 nations now have the ability to shoot down
satellites. "If we don't keep space as a sanctuary ... once an arms race
begins in space all those satellites become very vulnerable." 

The Space Security Index aims to present "a policy-neutral statement of the
facts as to the status of space security," said Graham, a former ambassador,
US arms-control negotiator and special representative for arms control under
former US president Bill Clinton.

The new report warned that international tensions over space are rising, but
while "it is in all nations' self-interest to safeguard use of the space
environment ... there is a widening impasse on how to do this."

It focused on the United States's "small and controversial program for
space-based ballistic missile defense and proto-technologies that may form
the basis for future space-based weapons," and Earth-based weapons programs.


"There is growing tension between the US and China over the security of
outer space, largely driven by mistrust and suspicions over weapons
programs," said co-author Ray Williamson of Secure World Foundation in the
news release.

The report said China's test "created 1500 pieces of trackable debris in
heavily used orbits - one of the worst manmade debris-creating events in
history - but debris caused by routine space operations is also a problem."

"Even a small piece of metal, traveling at 7.5 kilometers per second, can
destroy a spacecraft worth billions of dollars," said William Marshall of
the NASA Ames Research Center, an advisor to the space index.

"The number of objects in Earth orbit have increased steadily; today there
are an estimated 35 million pieces of space debris," said the report, noting
that 90 percent of 13,000 orbiting objects large enough to damage or destroy
a spacecraft are space debris. 

The report will be presented to the United Nations First Committee on
international security on October 22. 

It was released by the Simons Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation
Research at the University of British Columbia, in this western Canadian
city. 

The centre is one of several North American science and policy organizations
contributing to the index; others include the Cypress Fund for Peace and
Security, the Institute of Air and Space Law at McGill University, Project
Ploughshares, Secure World Foundation and the Space Generation Foundation.

The research is funded by the foreign affairs and international trade
departments of the Canadian government, the Ford Foundation and the Secure
World Foundation, project manager Jessica West told AFP.