Two or three times a day, a satellite circling Earth narrowly misses destruction by an orbital hailstorm of junk sweeping the busy super highways of space.

A spreading cloud of shrapnel from the collision of two satellites earlier this month is making wrecks for working spacecraft around Earth all but inevitable, analysts warn. As the ninth significant crack-up in two years -- including a punctured nuclear satellite -- the wreckage of Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 is fostering a chain reaction of collisions that puts billions...