Satellites at Risk in Crowded Skies

Heads up, Chicken Little. The Information Age may finally prove you right.

Red-hot demand for cellular phones, pagers and other wireless devices is triggering an explosion of communications satellites that, in turn, is increasing the risk of a disastrous collision in space, experts say.

Just last month, the international space station had to be moved in its Earth orbit to avoid a collision with debris from a spent Pegasus rocket that came within a mile of the station, according to NASA.

Although there is little likelihood that any satellite debris could hit a populated area before burning up in the atmosphere, the increasing concentration of satellites circling 300 to 500 miles above the Earth is raising concerns. Crashes in space could cost hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment damage and disrupt critical communications links around the world.

The number of commercial satellites circling the Earth in low orbit has more than tripled from 54 in 1996 to 175 this year, according to the Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Assn. in Alexandria, Va. And the congestion is about to get a lot worse.

Led by the ambitious 288-satellite, $10-billion Teledesic project targeting wireless high-speed Internet access, more than 500 satellites are scheduled to be launched in the next three to five years, creating a traffic jam of cosmic proportions.

All told, there are about 8,200 objects larger than a softball--including all manner of debris from space launches--in orbit, according to the U.S. Space Command. That’s significant because even an object the size of a quarter traveling in space at speeds of 17,000 mph can disable a spacecraft, experts say.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that they have more satellites in space,” NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown said. Fortunately, he added, NASA has improved its technology and is working more closely with the military to avoid collisions.

That’s not the case in private industry, say worried executives. They complain that the Space Command, which tracks orbital bodies and warns federal agencies when government-operated craft might collide with errant space objects, won’t share similar data with them.

The Space Command can track objects as small as a softball, but it does not provide warnings to commercial satellite operators.

“Because of the liability issues involved, we don’t give warnings as a general rule,” USSC spokesman Maj. Michael Birmingham said. He explained that the agency might be held financially liable if, for example, it told a satellite operator to move to avoid a softball-size object, but then the satellite was hit by a smaller object that USSC’s radar could not track.

“The U.S. Space Command must change their attitude,” said Ben Chang, director of satellite engineering management at Intelsat, the international satellite consortium. “I’m afraid if we don’t do something, someday a major disaster will happen in space.”

Chang and other experts said that while there are private firms that survey space, their data on space debris isn’t nearly as extensive as the government’s.

Until more extensive private surveillance can be developed, commercial satellite operators may be forced to build more durable machines. That, however, would increase the cost of launches as competition pressures prices of wireless services.

“It’s a risk that definitely has to be better managed,” said John B. Higginbotham, the president of SpaceVest, a Reston, Va., satellite venture-capital firm.