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?