An international meeting of hundreds of aerospace safety experts from America, Europe, Russia, and China has begun work on a blueprint for a key building block of a space arms control regime: a civilian space situational awareness system.

A new study finds that the geostationary orbit is becoming cluttered with inactive satellites due to the failure of spacefaring nations to move satellites into disposal orbits after they have ceased to function.

Space policy experts are beginning to discuss a surveillance and collision avoidance service -- a traffic cop-like tactic to better regulate outer space.

Theresa Hitchens argues the "failure to stem the creation of space debris will undercut the security of all assets in space, increasing the likelihood of collisions and possible conflict over liability for them." She offers a number of actions for the international community to pursue, including an "open, publicly available space surveillance network and database."

The U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs is considering proposals to establish pollution and air traffic controls in orbit.

Theresa Hitchens discusses three measures that would help improve international space cooperation and reach a compromise on the space weapons debate. The three measures are space debris mitigation, space traffic control, and transparency.

The United States, China and most other major nations with satellites in space have failed to register all of them -- a violation of a Cold War-era U.N. convention intended to keep the arms race from moving into orbit.

Astronomers charge that the U.S. is not in compliance with the 1975 U.N. Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space because several U.S. spy satellites are not in the orbits the Pentagon says they are.

America's spy satellites are not in the orbits the Pentagon says they are, according to a respected space analyst. The errors will add to concerns over George W. Bush's plans to place weapons in space. If today's satellite orbits cannot be trusted, opponents reason, how will we verify the numbers of future space-based anti-missile lasers and anti-satellite weapons?

The remains of rockets are raining from space, hitting Earth with disturbing frequency. While no one yet has been killed or seriously hurt, scientists say the risk of injury is greater, as more and more pieces reach the ground.