Shiny New Space Fence To Monitor Orbiting Junk

coondoggie writes "Some work has begun on tracking and detecting the overabundance of space junk which has become a growing priority as all manner of satellites, rockets and possible commercial space shots are promised in the coming few years. Today Northrop Grumman said it grabbed $30 million from the US Air Force to start developing the first phase of a global space surveillance ground radar system. The new S-Band Space Fence is part of the Department of Defense's effort to detect and track what are known as resident space objects (RSO), consisting of thousands of pieces of space debris as well as commercial and military satellites. The new Space Fence will replace the current VHF Air Force Space Surveillance System built in 1961."

I figured DHS was involved in the space fence...

[Majik Sheff]

To keep out the illegal aliens!

*insert rimshot here*

Re:Deorbit

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce, could those be frickin' infared lasers?

I like where you're going with this.

Re:Trapped on earth

[Macrat]

It didn't stop them in Wall*E

Wasn't this covered in the TV show Quark?

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

I'm pretty sure that Quark covered the "Space Garbage Collection" technology... Why haven't we implemented this?

There's really no need...

[triffid_98]

In a few months we'll have Large Hadron Collider back online. The black holes are sure to clean up this mess once they've collected enough planetary mass.