U.S. warns of space "dodgeball" after satellite crash

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Countries with satellites in space will have to play "dodgeball" for decades to avoid debris from this week's collision of U.S. and Russian satellites over Siberia, a top U.S. military officer said on Thursday.

"My worry is that that debris field is going to be up there for a while," said General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former head of the military's space operations.

"So we're going to have to play a little bit of dodgeball for many tens of years to come," he said.

"The good news is once it stabilizes, it's relatively predictable," he told a forum on the national security implications of operations in space. "The bad news is it's a large area."

A telecommunications satellite owned by Iridium Satellite and a defunct Russian military communications satellite were destroyed about 485 miles (780 km) above the Russian Arctic on Tuesday.

Cartwright, who from 2004 to 2007 headed the Pentagon's Strategic Command responsible for space operations, said the military had been alerted by Iridium to the sudden "non-reporting" of the destroyed craft.

SATELLITE NETWORK

Iridium runs a network that uses 66 satellites to provide voice and data services for about 300,000 far-flung clients worldwide. It provides voice and data services for areas not served by ground-based communications networks.