Europe and US to protect satellites

The European Space Agency has signed an agreement with the US Strategic Command to improve information exchanges about satellites.

The agreement signed on 30 October will allow timelier sharing of space information between the two countries on their space observation missions. The agency aims to protect its satellites from space junk more efficiently with collision warnings, ESA said.

Holger Krag, head of the ESA’s Space Debris Office, said: “In time-critical scenarios like a degraded orbit injection after launch or sudden loss of contact with one of our missions, there will be fewer formalities and shorter time until we get the data we’d like.”