Darkened skies: murky picture of what's happening in space worries Air Force officials.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: STRATEGIC COMMAND

OMAHA, Neb. -- One year ago, the esoteric subject of "space situational awareness" was the fifth or sixth bullet on Air Force PowerPoint charts listing needs for the military's spacecraft fleets.

The ability to know what is happening in the environment surrounding the nation's vital spy and military satellites was mentioned on conference podiums, but little progress was made.

Then came Jan. 11, when the Chinese military launched a missile at one of its own aging weather satellites to demonstrate its ability to knock spacecraft flying over its territory out of the sky.

Now improving space situational awareness is at the top of an Air Force wish list that has grown significantly since the anti-satellite test.

"We've got to get much better at our space surveillance capability," said Air Force Maj. Gen. William Shelton, commander of the 14th Air Force Wing.

The nation's commercial, military and spy agency satellites can peer down on earth and take clear pictures of objects of at least one meter in length, and less. Legions of analysts, and now automated computer programs, are trained to pour over these images. However, when it comes to aiming sensors upwards at what has been called the "ultimate high ground," the Defense Department has shortcomings in both the technology, and the personnel who can interpret data.

Officials said there are currently four serious gaps in the U.S. military's ability to know what is happening beyond Earth's atmosphere: the ability to track foreign satellites, predicting the effects of space weather, keeping tabs on orbital debris and reconstituting a corps of space intelligence analysts.

All these shortcomings add up to a murky picture of what is happening from low-earth orbit to just beyond geosynchronous heights 22,000 miles above earth.

A ground-based sensor network combines tracking stations designed specifically to keep tabs on satellites and debris. Cold War era missile defense warning radars are also used to help track spacecraft.

Some of these systems are "old and creaky" Shelton said at a U.S. Strategic Command conference sponsored by the Space Foundation.

In addition, the missile defense sites--not specifically designed for space situation awareness, but now applied to this task--were placed in the Northern Hemisphere to guard against the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles threat. There is virtually no coverage in the southern hemisphere and "this is a global business," Shelton added.

The Air Force...