Commerce Department officials on Feb. 11 unveiled a prototype for a space catalog and traffic software platform that would provide basic situational awareness and traffic management services.Known as the open architecture data repository, the OADR is a cloud-based system designed to track satellites and debris in space, and eventually replace the space catalog currently maintained by the U.S. military. The data would be used to calculate the probability of collisions in orbit, an issue of growing concern to the space industry as large numbers of satellites are being launched and more debris is generated. “What we have been largely concerned with are the tens of thousands of inert debris objects and a future that may be dominated by active satellites. In fact, we expect on the order of 57,000 new satellites in orbit by the year 2030,” Steve Volz, assistant administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Satellite and Information Service, told reporters.
Just how crowded is Low-Earth Orbit [LEO], and how can the satellite industry do more to prevent collision and manage traffic?These questions, which continue to perplex satellite industry stakeholders, dominated the SATELLITE 2022 Tuesday afternoon session, “The Great LEO Congestion Debate: What Does it Mean to Be Crowded in Space?” which brought together experts in space science, law, and business. The session was less of a debate about whether crowding exists, and more of a discussion on what space stakeholders must do to prevent collision and catastrophe.<snip>“Everybody wants to focus on constellations,” said Darren McKnight, senior technical fellow for LeoLabs, a six-year-old, venture-funded spinout of SRI International which leverages radar technologies and predictive analytics to monitor orbital debris and assess the risk of collision. “Constellations are agile operating halos and many people think they’re the problem. I’m going to say they’re the victim.”
Keeping close tabs on satellites and their increasingly crowded orbits requires exquisite spatial data that multiple startups say can only be gained from space.At least eight early-stage companies in North America, Europe, and Australia have secured funds for space-based systems they say will be needed to provide more accurate, complete and reliable information about objects in space.Some of these startups are chasing anticipated demand for guiding on-orbit servicers. Others see more potential in providing intricately detailed maps and trajectories of satellites, rocket stages and other objects across the near-space landscape.Some envisage deploying hundreds of dedicated space situational awareness (SSA) satellites, whereas others opt to deploy their sensors on third-party spacecraft.
The new head of the Office of Space Commerce says he’s talking with industry on how his office can best take over civil space traffic management while also potentially taking on more regulatory responsibilities.Speaking June 22 at the Fourth Summit for Space Sustainability by the Secure World Foundation and the U.K. Space Agency, Richard DalBello said he’s been on a “listening tour” with satellite operators and commercial space situational awareness data providers since taking over as director of the Office of Space Commerce last month.That office is charged with implementing Space Policy Directive 3, a four-year-old policy that directs the Commerce Department to take over civil space traffic management responsibilities (STM) currently handled by the Defense Department. That includes providing warnings to satellite operators of potential close approaches between their satellites and other space objects.
Chirag Parikh, executive secretary of the National Space Council, said he expects the Office of Space Commerce to start developing an architecture for space traffic management, an initiative that has been bogged down by studies and lack of funding.“We were very happy that we were able to get Richard DalBello in that position of leadership to run the Office of Space Commerce,” Parikh said July 13 at a conference on Capitol Hill hosted by the Future Space Leaders Foundation.DalBello, a space industry veteran and former government official, was named to the top job at the Office of Space Commerce in late April. The post had been vacant since January 2021.
The Departments of Commerce and Defense have signed an agreement to cooperate on transferring responsibility for civil and commercial space traffic management.Don Graves, deputy secretary of commerce, announced the memorandum of agreement, or MOA, between his department and the Pentagon during a Sept. 9 meeting of the National Space Council at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.The agreement “will drive our mutual work,” he said. “That’s really going to allow us to have not just a basic level of space traffic awareness, but it will also allow us to drive the research, the innovation, we all know we need to maximize the space environment for future generations.”
AMOS 2022 — A new memorandum of agreement between the Defense and Commerce Departments on space monitoring cooperation essentially kicks the can down the road on key issues — including the thorny, vital question of whether the Pentagon will have a veto on the dissemination of any commercial data gathered for a future civil space traffic management regime, according to a copy of the document obtained by Breaking Defense.In short, the MoA simply pledges the two sides to cooperatively work to transfer of authority from DoD to Commerce over providing civil, commercial and non-US operators with space situational awareness data about the whereabouts of space objects, as well as STM services like warnings of potential on-orbit collisions. But specifics will be figured out by a joint working group later at an undecided date.
In an #ascendspace panel on orbital space safety, Ryan Shepperd of Iridium acknowledges some “nervousness” about upcoming transition of civil STM from DOD to Commerce. Concern that something may be lost in transition; what DOC offers has to be at least as good as DOD today.SpaceX’s David Goldstein offers similar views: DOD provides a service today without which we could not operate; want what Commerce provides to be at least as good. Very supportive of DOC taking over civil STM and will bend over backwards to help them be successful. #ascendspace
Space Force Maj. Gen. DeAnna Burt said discussions between DoD and the Department of Commerce are picking up momentum as both agencies work to figure out how to transition space traffic management to the Office of Space Commerce. Burt, who is special assistant to the vice chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force, spoke Nov. 7 at the Air Traffic Control Association’s annual conference and exhibition. She said it is “absolutely vital” that Commerce succeeds at establishing a civilian space traffic management office, an effort that started in 2018 when the former Trump administration issued a policy directing Commerce to provide spaceflight safety services for civil and commercial satellite operators, a job currently performed by U.S. Space Command’s 18th Space Defense squadron.
The Defense Department’s far-future research organization has launched a project designed to incentivize operations of large numbers of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) to also use their constellations as a neighborhood watch — and provide the sensor data collected to DoD, and eventually the Commerce Department, “as a service.”The new effort, called Space-domain Wide Area Tracking and Characterization or Space-WATCH, “seeks to leverage the growing number of commercial LEO constellations carrying low-cost but highly proliferated sensor technology to gain situational awareness throughout LEO at a fraction of the cost of the existing ground-based approaches,” according to a DARPA solicitation published last week.
A draft version of Commerce Department’s long-awaited plan for a free space traffic management service for commercial and civil space operators goes beyond the data and analysis currently provided by the Defense Department, including margins of error regarding satellite orbital paths and “more advanced” calculations of the probability of crashes.The parameters of the “basic” space situational awareness (SSA) safety service — designed to free Space Command from the job — are detailed in a draft request for information (RFI), obtained by Breaking Defense, asking for industry input to the provisional plan. Data and analytics to be include in that service will be provided from commercial and governmental sources, the draft RFI notes.
We are building a Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) and seek feedback from commercial SSA providers and users about the basic services TraCSS will provide. More: https://federalregister.gov/d/2023-01556 @CommerceGov #SpaceSituationalAwareness
European officials say they’re making progress to achieve “strategic autonomy” in space traffic management by building up both capabilities and policy.During a session at the 15th European Space Conference Jan. 25, representatives from the European Commission, European Space Agency and industry said they were making progress in building up European abilities in space situational awareness (SSA) and space traffic management (STM), reducing reliance on the United States.“There’s a high political awareness on the need to achieve strategic autonomy on SSA and STM in Europe,” said Pascal Faucher, chair of the European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking (EUSST) partnership. EUSST is a group of 15 E.U. member states that have agreed to combine national capabilities to improve efforts to track space objects and provide warnings of potential collisions. It opened its collision avoidance service worldwide as of the beginning of the year.
The Commerce Department has outlined the services it proposes to offer free of charge to satellite operators from the space traffic management system it is developing.In a request for information (RFI) published Jan. 26, the department’s Office of Space Commerce listed what services it anticipates offering through a “basic” space safety service and those more advanced services that will not be included.The Office of Space Commerce plans to provide those services through a system called the Traffic Management System for Space (TraCSS), previously known as the open architecture data repository. The office is developing TraCSS to eventually take over providing civil space traffic management services, such as warnings of potential collisions, from the Defense Department as outlined in Space Policy Directive 3 in 2018.
At the FAA CST conference, Rich DalBello, director of the Office of Space Commerce, says the office recently completed a space traffic management pilot program in GEO using exclusively commercial data. Analyzing that pilot program now but "highly confident" it worked well.DalBello: moving from a world where Space Track and the 18th SDS are the only sources of SSA data. Need to coordinate internationally as more sources of data come online. But, right now Chinese are not sharing data. Need all responsible operators at the table.DalBello: fewer commercial sources of data for LEO space situational awareness data. Not sure we will do a pilot program like in GEO, but will do some kind of focused investigation.
The Office of Space Commerce has started beta tests of its new space traffic coordination system, providing conjunction notices to a handful of operators.The Office of Space Commerce, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) within the Department of Commerce, announced Sept. 30 the beginning of phase 1.0 of its Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS), the civil space traffic coordination system that will ultimately take over for the Defense Department.Nine satellite operators are involved in this initial phase of TraCSS: The Aerospace Corporation, Eutelsat OneWeb, Georgia Tech, Intelsat, Iridium, Maxar, NOAA, Planet and Telesat. Those organizations operate between a handful of satellites to, in the case of OneWeb and Planet, several hundred, and in orbits from LEO to GEO. About 1,000 satellites overall are included in this phase of TraCSS.<snip>TraCSS will ultimately replace Space-Track, the service currently provided by the Defense Department. DalBello said earlier this month that the transition from Space-Track to TraCSS should be complete by the end of 2025, but it will be up to the DoD to determine when it will shut down Space-Track.
I'd like to bring to the attention of this group this call for transparency in deep space astronautics by the American Astronomical Society:https://aas.org/sites/default/files/2024-09/AAS%20Statment%20on%20Spaceflight%20Transparency.pdfandhttps://planet4589.org/space/policy/DeepSpaceTransparency.txt
We note that:…(8) some US government funded astronomical surveys have been restricted from publishing data that contain incidental observations of certain objects in Earth orbits, including deep space objects beyond 100,000 km;…We therefore believe that:…(D) The practice of restricting publication of observations of artificial objects impedes the implementation of the above principles. This practice should be reviewed to determine if there are in fact any national security reasons for applying such restrictions to objects in deep space (beyond 100,000 km), given that open source research strongly suggests that no sensitive missions operate there. This process should be as transparent as practicable, and might also be extended to other regions of space, including to objects in low Earth orbit.
