Cdnwolf
11-19-2012, 06:00 AM
The U.S. military is launching a far-out neighborhood watch. But instead of warding off burglars, these amateur watchdogs are tracking orbital debris and possible satellite collisions in Earth orbit.
The sky-monitoring project, called SpaceView, is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program that enrolls the talents of amateur astronomers to help protect American space assets from orbital trash.
The vision behind the DARPA SpaceView program is to provide more diverse data to the Space Surveillance Network, a U.S. Air Force program charged with cataloguing and observing space junk and debris to identify potential near-term collisions. NASA estimates more than 500,000 pieces of hazardous space debris orbit the Earth, threatening satellites that support peacekeeping and combat missions.
These dangerous objects include spent rocket stages, defunct satellites and fragments from other spacecraft that are the result of erosion, explosion and collision, according to a DARPA statement. A collision between one of these small pieces of debris and a satellite could release more than 20,000 times the energy of a head-on automobile collision at 65 mph (105 kph), the statement adds. [Worst Space Debris Events in History]
The sky-monitoring project, called SpaceView, is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program that enrolls the talents of amateur astronomers to help protect American space assets from orbital trash.
The vision behind the DARPA SpaceView program is to provide more diverse data to the Space Surveillance Network, a U.S. Air Force program charged with cataloguing and observing space junk and debris to identify potential near-term collisions. NASA estimates more than 500,000 pieces of hazardous space debris orbit the Earth, threatening satellites that support peacekeeping and combat missions.
These dangerous objects include spent rocket stages, defunct satellites and fragments from other spacecraft that are the result of erosion, explosion and collision, according to a DARPA statement. A collision between one of these small pieces of debris and a satellite could release more than 20,000 times the energy of a head-on automobile collision at 65 mph (105 kph), the statement adds. [Worst Space Debris Events in History]