U.S. tracks satellites for crash analysis

BEIJING, Nov. 4(Xinhuanet) -- U.S. is tracking 800 maneuverable satellites on a daily basis for possible collisions, a military officer said Tuesday as quoted by medai reports.

General Kevin Chilton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said this in a space confercence in Omaha, Nebraska.

"Collision of the Russia and America's satellites at the year beginning has destroyed any sense that space was so vast that collisions were highly improbable. The U.S. Air Force have begun upgrading its ability to predict possible collisions in space since then," he said.

He also said that military officials had wanted to do more thorough analysis of possible collisions in space, but had lacked the resources.

Air Force Lieutenant General Larry James, who heads U.S. Strategic Command's Joint Functional Component Command for Space, told reporters the Air Force met its goal for tracking possible collisions among 800 satellites that have the ability to be moved in September, ahead of an October target date.

"Our goal now is to do that conjunction assessment for all active satellites ... roughly around 1,300 satellites ... by the end of the year and provide that information to users as required," James said.

The U.S. Iridium 33 satellite collided with Russia's Cosmos 2251 satellite in space on Feb.10, 2009, shooting out massive debris clouds and posing a slight risk to the international space station.