Paris, 17 June 2010 – The European Union (EU) should lobby for international legislation to prevent further escalation of the growing problem of man-made debris orbiting in space, Edward O’HARA (United Kingdom, Socialist Group) told the Assembly on Thursday.

Presenting a report, which was adopted unanimously, on “European security and space debris” on behalf of the Technological and Aerospace Committee, he said that the volume of debris in space was a major risk for the security of space installations and a source “of extreme concern”.

He explained that space debris was currently made up of about 150 000 objects measuring 10 cms and more, 200 000 measuring between 1 and 10 cms and 135 million measuring less than 1 cm. “It is reasonable to say the debris produced through human activity now presents more of a threat” than its naturally occurring counterpart, he said. The increase in the number of objects in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which is up to 2 000 kms away, had “sparked a chain reaction [so that] objects are likely to collide at any moment, generating further debris”.

Two events in particular had given a new dimension to the problem. One had occurred in January 2007, when China had carried out a test over its own territory by deliberately destroying one of its own satellites, and the other on 10 February 2009, when an Iridium communications satellite had collided with Cosmos 2251, a decommissioned Russian telecommunications satellite, over the Taimur Peninsula in Siberia. In the case of China, the army had launched an anti-satellite weapon against the decommissioned Fengyun-1C (FC-1C) meteorological satellite.

In its recommendation the Assembly called on the WEU and EU Councils and members of the European Space Agency (ESA) to ensure that any guidelines adopted by ESA and the Inter-Agency Debris Committee (IADC, composed of the 11 space agencies responsible for creating debris) were fully respected, to monitor space debris closely and to ensure the ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) project progressed beyond the preparatory stage. It also underlined the need for the EU Satellite Centre to be allocated a budget commensurate with its “wide responsibility in this sphere”.