Security, life threatened by space junk, weapons

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VANCOUVER, (Canada), Sept 15 (AFP): Human security and technologies from cell phones to weather forecasts are more at risk than ever from anti-satellite weapons and space junk, said a research report released Friday.
An anti-satellite test by China in January, and increased US opposition to restrictions on space weapons, were cited as two main global threats by "Space Security 2007," the fourth annual report by the Space Security Index.
"The dismantling of the space sanctuary for communications satellites, and weather satellites, and those other divides on which the modern economy depends so greatly, thereby making it impossible to utilize those devices, would be negative to every single person in the world," said report co-author Thomas Graham.
"You wouldn't be able to have cell phones, Blackberries, pagers, the kind of television you have now," Graham told AFP in a telephone interview from Virginia, warning that 30 nations now have the ability to shoot down satellites. "If we don't keep space as a sanctuary ... once an arms race begins in space all those satellites become very vulnerable."
The Space Security Index aims to present "a policy-neutral statement of the facts as to the status of space security," said Graham, a former ambassador, US arms-control negotiator and special representative for arms control under former US president Bill Clinton.
The new report warned that international tensions over space are rising, but while "it is in all nations' self-interest to safeguard use of the space environment ... there is a widening impasse on how to do this."
It focused on the United States's "small and controversial program for space-based ballistic missile defense and proto- technologies that may form the basis for future space-based weapons," and Earth-based weapons programs.
"There is growing tension between the US and China over the security of outer space, largely driven by mistrust and suspicions over weapons programs," said co-author Ray Williamson of Secure World Foundation in the news release.