U.S. military swears to track 800 satellites by October 1, 2009

Spurred by last month's collision of two satellites high above the Earth, the U.S. military plans to begin tracking all 800 maneuverable spacecraft currently operating in space by October 1, a senior U.S. Air Force official said on Monday.

U.S. Strategic Command and Air Force Space Command will work together to expand the number of satellites being tracked from about 300 currently, Air Force Colonel Dusty Tyson, chief of the Pentagon's National Security Space Office, told reporters at a space conference in Colorado Springs.

He said the decision was made at a high-level Pentagon meeting on March 24 attended by Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, General Kevin Chilton, head of Strategic Command, General Robert Kehler, who runs Air Force Space Command and John Grimes, the Pentagon's chief information officer.

"They're going to stand up a level of capability by 1 October. They hope to be able to provide conjunction analysis on all 800, plus or minus, maneuverable satellites," Tyson said at the Space Foundation's annual National Space Symposium.

Tyson said some officials had long believed a collision of satellites would eventually happen and had been pressing for better tracking of satellites and other objects in space.

But the February 10 collision of a dead Russian military communications satellite and a commercial U.S. satellite owned by Iridium had spurred the military into quicker action, he said.

"It was definitely an impetus to get out and get moving faster. Now that the event has happened, there is definitely movement afoot to try to prevent it from happening again," he said.

Tyson declined comment on whether better tracking by the U.S. government could have averted the incident.

India to work with USA on anti-satellite weapons

India, which is one of the few countries in the world to have significant space capabilities, is willing to work with the US to develop anti-satellite weapons, a top diplomat has said.

"This is an area of convergence on which we would be happy to work together with the US and contribute to a multilateral agreement," Shyam Saran, Prime Minister's Special Envoy, said in his address to the Brookings Institution.

Saran was referring to the recent announcements made by the US President, Barack Obama, about his intention to join multilateral efforts to prevent military conflict in space and to negotiate an agreement to prohibit the testing of anti-satellite weapons.

India welcomes this, he said. "We have a large number of communications and resource survey satellites currently in orbit. Although this does not fall strictly within the nuclear domain, the need to ensure the peaceful uses of outer space is important for nuclear stability and international security," Saran said.

In 2007, China had destroyed one of its own defunct satellites with a ballistic missile, sparking global concerns. In February last year, a US Navy ship too launched a missile that hit a dying spy satellite.