Space trash threatens satellites, Pentagon warns

Trash in space may bring commerce and communications on Earth to a halt unless policymakers and executives take steps to prevent satellite collisions with orbiting junk, according to a Pentagon report.

Potential crashes between satellites and debris -- refuse from old rockets, abandoned satellites and missile shrapnel -- are threatening the $250 billion space-services market providing financial communication, global-positioning navigation, international phone connections, Google Earth pictures, television signals and weather forecasts, the report says. Space is "increasingly congested and contested," said the Defense Department's interim U.S. Space Posture Review, which was sent to Congress in March and not publicly released. Scientists are warning that space collisions could set off an uncontrolled chain reaction that might make some orbits unusable for commercial or military satellites because they are too littered with debris. The February 2009 crash between a defunct Russian Cosmos satellite and an Iridium Communications Inc. satellite left 1,500 pieces of junk, each whizzing around the earth at 4.8 miles a second and each capable of destroying more satellites.