US aerospace defense and security company Lockheed Martin is planning to build a tracking station with a Canberra-based tech firm that can follow space debris that are potentially dangerous to government and telecommunication satellites around Earth's orbit.

Electro-Optic Systems (EOS) and Lockheed Martin are collaborating to develop a new system in the Australian outback to track and eliminate space junk.

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Ben Greene, chief executive of EOS says that NASA and all other space agencies strongly believe that space junk can easily obliterate a satellite and in effect, create an avalanche of collisions where debris can wipe out other satellites until nothing is left.

This means, there will be no communications, weather updates, or navigation satellites. And this catastrophic event could happen within 15 years. 

According to Trevor Thomas, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin, there are about 200 threats everyday from orbiting satellites. Although most satellites can sustain a minimal amount of damage from space junk, maintenance can cost up to US$500 million.

This tracking station will be comprised of a global network of sensors that will initially emanate from the EOS headquarters at Mount Stromlo in Canberra along with a new facility in Western Australia.

Operators will now be informed of the potential damage risk from space debris where the fundamental purpose of this tracking station is to move satellites that are most at risk.

Lockheed and EOS will now use an advanced optical and laser tracking technology that was first used in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. This technology can track debris moving  at a speed of 17,500 miles an hour.

To date, there are about 300,000 bits of space junk ranging in size from one centimeter to larger ones that have been orbiting the Earth for more than half a century.

EOS has been tracking down space junk for years and even investing AUS$80 million in developing laser and optical tracking systems.

Greene also said that EOS aims to cover the next five to six years tracking space debris with their laser technology, along with the U.S. Air Force Space Fence Radar. 

After tracking these potential dangerous space debris, EOS and Lockheed along with other systems will conduct an orbital space clean-up that will remove dead satellites as well.These ground based radars will then nudge smaller space junk into lower orbit to burn up in the atmosphere.

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