Private companies joining effort to track space junk

Nature : For decades, the US military has been tracking satellites and space debris, and it recently began providing warnings to satellite operators of possible collisions. Now, private companies are joining the effort. Last year, Analytical Graphics, a defense contractor based in Pennsylvania, opened the Commercial Space Operations Center (ComSpOC) for the same purpose, and Lockheed Martin announced that it would establish a tracking site in Western Australia. The military tracking systems often use out-of-date computers that have problems handling the large amounts of data the military collects. That has led to occasional false alarms and problems with the overall quantity and quality of the data that the military has been providing to satellite operators. The primary difference between the military and private operations is that the military collects its data from the government’s radar and telescope installations while ComSpOC purchases much of its data from a network of private monitoring stations that includes optical telescopes, RF trackers, and radar. Although ComSpOC is tracking just 6000–7000 objects, far fewer than the 20 000 tracked by the military, that number includes nearly all of the significant objects in geosynchronous orbit.