Raytheon animation image of satellite collision
October 25th, 2012
11:49 AM ET
Mending the 'space fence'
The Air Force wants to rebuild a “fence” around Earth to keep the riff-raff out.
Sounds like a Hollywood script to counter aliens or asteroids but it's a real program the military wants to update at an estimated cost of $3.5 billion.
Just don't expect any space cowboys digging post holes and wrangling barbed wire in orbit.
The Space Fence program is a series of radar signals managed by the Air Force since the early 1960's that has been tracking an ever-growing pile of rocket and satellite parts and other man-made fragments that zoom around Earth’s vicinity at thousands of miles per hour.
@CNNLightYears on Twitter
People in Orbit
Cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov
Expedition 36 Commander
Expedition 36 Commander
Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Cosmonaut Chris Cassidy
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Expedition 36 Flight Engineer
Contributors
-
Elizabeth Landau
Writer/Producer -
Sophia Dengo
Senior Designer
| Part of 
The Space Fence a large, S-band radar that will be based in Kwajalein atoll, in the Republic of the Marshall Islands–will be capable of not only detecting more objects, but also much smaller objects in low-Earth orbit.