An aerospace industry giant is teaming up with another company from Australia to track the giant cloud of space debris circling the planet.

Lockheed Martin Corp., based in Bethesda, Maryland, and EOS Space Systems Pty Ltd, based out of Canberra, have entered into a strategic cooperation agreement, through which they will establish a site in Western Australia from which both government and commercial interests will be able to better track the growing mass of natural and man-made projectiles.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, there are an estimated 500,000 pieces of debris the size of a marble or larger, more than 20,000 pieces larger than a softball and millions of other objects -- so small they can't be detected -- orbiting Earth at speeds upwards of 17,500 miles per hour, which is fast enough for even the tiniest of paint flecks to exact notable damage to a satellite or spacecraft, a Lockheed news release explained.

"The greatest risk to space missions comes from non-trackable debris," said Nicholas Johnson, NASA chief scientist for orbital debris.

But the debris pieces that can be tracked will be followed by the new Lockheed/EOS system, which will use a combination of lasers and state-of-the-art optical systems, similar to those integrated into the world's strongest telescopes, to locate and define man-made debris objects.

The program will include electro-optical technologies that can zoom in on specific objects and offer an added layer of coverage beyond radar-based systems like the U.S. Air Force's Space Fence, which sweeps the sky and tracks about 200,000 known objects.

Relying on advanced sensors and software, the joint effort -- which will include the development of a Website through which the tracking data can be accessed -- will be able to focus "on specific objects and determine how fast they're moving, what direction they're spinning and what they're made of," the Lockheed release said.

"Ground-based space situational awareness is a growing priority for government and commercial organizations around the world that need to protect their investments in space," said Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space Systems. "Through this agreement with [EOS], we'll offer customers a clearer picture of the objects that could endanger their satellites, and do so with great precision and cost-effectiveness."

His company's new relationship with Lockheed Martin, said EOS Space Systems Chief Executive Officer Ben Greene, "will help both organizations establish a global network of space sensors, while simultaneously increasing the market reach of the partners' data and services ... we consider the strategic partnership with Lockheed Martin a major step towards the achievement of critical mass of sensors, data and services ... providing detailed yet easily usable information."