The U.S. military is launching a far-out neighborhood watch. But
instead of warding off burglars, these amateur watchdogs are
tracking orbital debris and possible satellite collisions in
Earth orbit. The sky-monitoring project, called SpaceView, is a
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program that
enrolls the talents of amateur astronomers to help protect
American space assets from orbital trash. The vision behind the
DARPA SpaceView program is to provide more diverse data to the
Space Surveillance Network, a U.S. Air Force program charged
with cataloging and observing space junk and debris to identify
potential near-term collisions. NASA estimates more than 500,000
pieces of hazardous space debris orbit the Earth, threatening
satellites that support peacekeeping and combat missions. These
dangerous objects include spent rocket stages, defunct
satellites and fragments from other spacecraft that are the
result of erosion, explosion and collision, according to a DARPA
statement. A collision betwe