Scant Space Expertise Seen as Challenge for Foreign Regulators

Some foreign space regulators might soon struggle with a lack of space expertise, according to Scott Pace, George Washington University director-Space Policy Institute. During an FCC Space Bureau open house Thursday covering orbital debris, Pace said a lot of space agencies are born from telecom ministries, yet often there is a "thinness" to their capacity for space issues. That makes the U.S.' leadership role in space increasingly important, Pace said.

The open house also featured Space Bureau staffers enumerating orbital debris-related mistakes they see often in license applications. Sankar Persaud, Space Bureau Satellite Licensing Division engineer, said non-geostationary orbit applications often use the NASA Orbital Debris Assessment Report format, yet that doesn't work with all the information the FCC needs, requiring the agency to go back and get additional information such as how the satellite will be tracked. He said some applications don't contain specifics about how a satellite operator will handle conjunction warnings. The bureau wants "more concrete, more precise" details about the planned response, he said. Applications are often scant on details about measures an operator is taking in designing the satellite for its demise, he said. Having everything burn up on reentry is the optimal end, he added.

In anticipation that Congress might give Commerce regulatory oversight of novel space missions, it's discussing how it would incorporate space sustainability and debris mitigation into that mission, Gabriel Swiney, director-space policy, advocacy and international issues at Commerce's Office of Space Commerce, said. Space Bureau Associate Chief Stephen Duall said the agency anticipates its in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing NPRM -- looking at licensing RF aspects of those novel missions -- will be in the Federal Register "soon," so the agency will start receiving comments. The commission adopted the ISAM NPRM at its February meeting (see 2402150053).

Commerce's space situational awareness (SSA) system, Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCCS), will start producing data in October for some beta users, Swiney said. Those beta users will transition over time to the normal product, he said. While the DOD's SSA system shared data on the basis of bilateral agreements, Commerce is "going to have TraCCS open to the world," with the data freely available, he said. The agency is figuring out now what types of services TraCSS should provide vs. more-advanced services that are better provided by commercial SSA operators, he said.

Commerce doesn't anticipate TraCCS will be a global system, as other nations want to have SSA systems and not rely on U.S. data, Swiney said. He said Commerce is talking with other nations about "a global federated system of SSA providers." The talks are covering issues like coordination and transparency of data, so that if a satellite operator gets messages from different SSA providers about a possible conjunction, there's an understanding of possible different technical standards between the two.

At one time it was common to deploy a satellite with no propulsion into a low earth orbit where it might remain for decades, but today that "is not considered an option," said Space Bureau Special Counsel Karl Kensinger. The FCC's five-year disposal rule sets a benchmark for commercial operations and is indicative of shifts in thinking globally about orbital debris, Kensinger said.

While the U.N. is the scene of discussions about matters like light pollution and astronomical observation interference, the most important talks will be among U.S., Chinese and U.K. regulators, Pace said.