The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has identified 10 near-term, practical steps the Obama administration should take to safeguard U.S. satellites and protect space. It announced its recommendations today in a report, “Securing the Skies,” shortly before the Obama administration is expected to release its National Security Space Strategy, which will define U.S. strategic goals for national security aspects of space.

Collisions in space don't happen very often, but when they do the impact is long-lasting. A coalition of satellite traffic cops, however, aims to prevent these episodes from occurring at all.

U.S. military officials increasingly worry that U.S. satellites are vulnerable to airborne assault, or even mere accident, in the Southern Hemisphere which has become something of a blind spot for military space tracking systems.

The US government is launching a competition, which will run until the end of 2010, to find the best way of tracking pieces of space junk down to the size of a pool ball.

The US military plans to boost the number of satellites it routinely monitors for the risk of a smash-up with orbiting debris. The move could prevent future accidents like the recent collision between a US communications satellite and a defunct Russian probe.

Two Space Age surprises – a close encounter between the International Space Station and a speeding piece of space junk, and an earlier collision between a US and a Russian satellite – are adding urgency to the efforts to improve collision alerts and reduce risks from space debris.

While the unprecedented smashup between a U.S. and Russian satellite earlier this month sparked a lot of attention, another wayward spacecraft — out-of-whack U.S. secret satellite DSP-23 — remains a serious concern.

The dramatic collision of U.S. and Russian satellites is the latest in a series of orbital events that highlight an urgent need for better monitoring of the growing traffic in space.

The Pentagon and NASA are scrambling to assess the risk to spacecraft and the international space station from hundreds of pieces of debris created in the collision Tuesday of two satellites 491 miles above Siberia. NASA's initial estimate is that the space station faces a "very small" but "elevated" risk of being struck.

Russian researchers are tracking the malfunctioning U.S. Defense Support Program satellite, DSP-23, out of concern that the it might prove troublesome to other high-value satellites in its populated geocentric orbit.