EchoStar-7 Not Seen as Posing Orbital Debris Concern: Dish

Dish Network "has a long track record of safely flying a large satellite fleet and takes seriously its responsibilities as an FCC licensee," the company emailed us Monday in response to the FCC Enforcement Bureau's $150,000 fine over disposal of the company's EchoStar-7 satellite (see 2310020049). "As the Enforcement Bureau recognizes in the settlement, the EchoStar-7 satellite was an older spacecraft (launched in 2002) that had been explicitly exempted from the FCC’s rule requiring a minimum disposal orbit. Moreover, the Bureau made no specific findings that EchoStar-7 poses any orbital debris safety concerns," it said.