"What we are doing is making ourselves more vulnerable to attack than we had been formerly. My personal view is that a day without space is not going - as some people say - to send us back to the dark ages. It's more likely to put us back into the 1960s."
Every day, miles above the Earth's atmosphere, an army of satellites provides us with a vital stream of information. From our mobile phones to satnavs, from shipping channels to television broadcasts, from the monitoring of our melting polar ice caps to the running of vital defence systems - our world would struggle to function without the satellites above us.
Cyber experts from across Britain gathered in London yesterday to ponder what would happen if we were forced to deal with a "day without space".
The threats against our satellites are as varied as they are numerous.
From solar storms that temporarily knock out communication, to mid-stratosphere crashes and deliberate attack, satellites are frighteningly vulnerable.
One of the issues causing the most concerns - that has somewhat belatedly sparked attempts to initiate a clean-up - is the sheer amount of litter surrounding Earth.
Nasa estimates that there are as many as 16,000 pieces of debris larger than 10cm orbiting within 2000km of earth - the region where most of the world's satellites are positioned.
Each piece can travel at tens of thousands of kilometres an hour, and could easily destroy any satellite it meets.
It's also getting crowded up there. Since the space race began in the late 1950s, more than 6500 satellites have been sent up, of which only 994 are still operational.
As Professor Richard Crowther, from the UK Space Agency put it: "Space is infinite, but the space around the earth is finite."
Three years ago the world was given a frightening glimpse into what will happen unless we reduce the number of redundant satellites in space when a working telecommunications satellite built by the United States firm Iridium smashed into a defunct Russian Kosmos satellite.
The computer models predicted the satellites would pass within half a kilometre of each other. Instead the collision, which took place at 41,840km/h, created more than 1000 extra pieces of debris larger than 10cm - which are still causing problems to this day. Given the carnage that can be unleashed by a collision, the array of redundant satellites provides an opportunity for malignant hackers looking to cause mayhem for strategic or anarchic reasons.
Mark Roberts, who pioneered the introduction of cyber elements into the war games that the MoD runs, hypothesised a scenario in which hackers take control of one or multiple redundant satellites and use them to crash into more vital ones.
"There are lots of satellites in orbit at the moment that have been taken off line," he explained.
"They still have propulsion, they have the ability to be restarted. Somebody particularly nasty could hack one of these things and then start to manoeuvre it."
Junking up the skies
6500 Satellites have been sent up since Sputnik
400,000 Pieces of debris smaller than 10cm in orbit
994 Operational satellites orbiting Earth
3000 The total number of satellites orbiting Earth (including those that are now defunct).
16,000 The number of pieces of debris larger than 10cm orbiting Earth in the area where most satellites are based.
- Independent
