As Satellites and Space Junk Proliferate, US to Revise Rules (reuters.com) 46
"No one imagined commercial space tourism taking hold, no one believed crowd-funded satellites and mega constellations at low earth orbit were possible, and no one could have conceived of the sheer popularity of space entrepreneurship," reads a statement Friday from the chair of America's Federal Communications Commission.
"But it's all happening...."
And Reuters reports on what happens next: With Earth's orbit growing more crowded with satellites, a U.S. government agency on Friday said it would begin revising decades-old rules on getting rid of space junk and on other issues such as satellite refueling and inspecting and repairing in-orbit spacecraft. "We believe the new space age needs new rules," Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said after the 4-0 FCC vote, adding that current rules "were largely built for another era."
Rosenworcel said the FCC needs "to make sure our rules are prepared for the proliferation of satellites in orbit and new activities in our higher altitudes."
The FCC also plans to look at "new ways to clean up orbital debris. After all, there are thousands of metric tons of junk in space," Rosenworcel added. The FCC will look at "the potential for orbital debris remediation and removal functions that offer the prospect of improvement in the orbital debris environment....."
"The FCC remains the only agency to license virtually every commercial space mission that touches the United States," FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said. "With that power comes the responsibility to understand the missions we authorize, and to create an enabling regulatory environment that opens new doors while still protecting against new risks."
A statement from the FCC describes their new policy review as a "modernization effort."
And it made a point of acknowledging that in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing has "the potential to build entire industries, create new jobs, mitigate climate change, and advance America's economic, scientific, technological, and national security interests."
And Reuters reports on what happens next: With Earth's orbit growing more crowded with satellites, a U.S. government agency on Friday said it would begin revising decades-old rules on getting rid of space junk and on other issues such as satellite refueling and inspecting and repairing in-orbit spacecraft. "We believe the new space age needs new rules," Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said after the 4-0 FCC vote, adding that current rules "were largely built for another era."
Rosenworcel said the FCC needs "to make sure our rules are prepared for the proliferation of satellites in orbit and new activities in our higher altitudes."
The FCC also plans to look at "new ways to clean up orbital debris. After all, there are thousands of metric tons of junk in space," Rosenworcel added. The FCC will look at "the potential for orbital debris remediation and removal functions that offer the prospect of improvement in the orbital debris environment....."
"The FCC remains the only agency to license virtually every commercial space mission that touches the United States," FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said. "With that power comes the responsibility to understand the missions we authorize, and to create an enabling regulatory environment that opens new doors while still protecting against new risks."
A statement from the FCC describes their new policy review as a "modernization effort."
And it made a point of acknowledging that in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing has "the potential to build entire industries, create new jobs, mitigate climate change, and advance America's economic, scientific, technological, and national security interests."
More than just junk (Score:5, Informative)
The statement talks about a lot more than just space junk. They are looking at ways to better make use of available spectrum for satellite broadcasts, which is going to increasingly become an issue. We are already seeing companies fighting over that.
They also talk about manufacturing in space.
I hope they look at reporting issues too. We are seeing more avoidance manoeuvres needed, and sometimes unpredictable behaviour of satellites as they move from launch orbit to operating orbit, for example. SpaceX claims it has AI to handle it, but a) I'm sure it's not really AI, and b) as far as other operators are concerned they want predictable behaviour so they don't have to make avoidance burns in case the "AI" doesn't react.
Re:More than just junk (Score:5, Insightful)
"No one in our organization had the foresight to imagine commercial space tourism taking hold, no one believed crowd-funded satellites and mega constellations at low earth orbit were possible, and no one could have conceived of the sheer popularity of space entrepreneurship despite clear evidence this was happening."
FTFY. I minored in astronomy and took a class in the early 90s that discussed these topics. Even Top Gear made a leap forward with amateur rocketry in Series 9.
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"No one in our organization had the foresight to imagine commercial space tourism taking hold, no one believed crowd-funded satellites and mega constellations at low earth orbit were possible, and no one could have conceived of the sheer popularity of space entrepreneurship despite clear evidence this was happening."
FTFY. I minored in astronomy and took a class in the early 90s that discussed these topics. Even Top Gear made a leap forward with amateur rocketry in Series 9.
Exactly this. But there was money and baksheesh to be made, and people that believed that politics were more powerful than physics, so here we are.
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Don't tell anyone but.... (Score:2)
They are doing it on purpose. You can't "identify the problem" causing holes in a space station if you don't have random projectiles flying around outside, can you?
No One Imagined... (Score:5, Informative)
I think Stanley Kubrick would like a word with you [youtube.com]...
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
He was literally flying on a Pan Am commercial spaceplane with stewardess , to a space station that had a Hilton hotel, to a Lunar ship (with more stewardesses). How much more "touristy" does it get?
The only thing unusual about the flight shown in the movie was that he was flying on special, chartered flights. Or are you suggesting
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I watched that movie a few years ago, and cried during that opening scene. When it was shot that was a reasonable expectation of what was possible by the year 2001, but neither Kubrick nor Asimov anticipated the unadulterated greed and aggression of the imperial war machine. Had NASA continued with the minuscule 4.5% of the Federal budget that it claimed at the peak of Apollo we would have opened the first permanent station on the moon in the early 1980s.
Re:No One Imagined... (Score:5, Insightful)
And more importantly, Arthur C. Clarke?
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Yes, a long before the first rocket ever boosted Clarke envisioned geosynchronous transmitters... Not that he was taken seriously any more than the later Kubrick/Clarke collaboration was
-- My God! It's full of stars!
Really? (Score:1)
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In 100+ years of science fiction, none of this was ever imagined?
Apparently science fiction writers are the kind of optimists who assume that no sufficiently advanced human society would expect 'voluntary self regulation' of littering to work in real estate as valuable and difficult to clean up as orbital space.
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A new excuse for students (Score:2)
Hey teacher, my homework got lost when space junk knocked out my satellite connection.
Cleanup effort also needed. (Score:5, Interesting)
We are also going to need a cleanup effort to clean up the orbital graveyard we've created already. Considering there sheer amount lift capacity that SpaceX can provide, it seems like we could deploy something massive enough to deflect hypersonic debris into a rapidly decaying orbit without creating new debris.
It just feels like governments have given up on the idea of clearing out Earth's orbit, possibly because they fear their own spy satellites being discovered and/or de-orbited.
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Everyone knows where everyone else's spy satellites are. You can't hide in orbit.
It's not so much that governments have give up, it's that they've barely started. Orbital clean-up is a hard problem, but not an urgent one before StarLink, and the copy-cat 1000+ satellite constellations. Given 20 years of multiple, competing satellite internet constellations, conditions will become very, very difficult.
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Starlink and the rest are in such low orbits that atmospheric drag will bring them down in 5-8 years, that's in the planning. In fact they're designed to burn up on reentry so that there won't be damage on the ground.
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No one imagined... (Score:2)
The only thing no one imagined is that it would happen while still getting into space with primitive chemical rockets rather than something better...the only real barriers had been in cost and capacity.
Our legacy (Score:2)
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There's a bunch of stuff, including Apollo boosters, that has already escaped Earth orbit and are in circumsolar orbit. They'll be around for millions of years unless something else impact them.
every word they said was wrong (Score:3)
"No one imagined commercial space tourism taking hold, no one believed crowd-funded satellites and mega constellations at low earth orbit were possible, and no one could have conceived of the sheer popularity of space entrepreneurship,"
1968's "2001:a space odyssey" which won an Oscar and has been viewed by likely billions of people had a Hilton hotel in space. That looks a lot like people "imagined commercial space tourism" 50+ years ago.
And how do you think satellites are funded now? Even US government satellites are effectively crowd funded via tax dollars.
And I've heard for 50+ years how much gold and other valuable minerals are waiting to be mined in space, so its just a matter of time for the "sheer popularity of space entrepreneurship" to happen.
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Recycling tipping point? (Score:1)
there are thousands of metric tons of junk in space
How much is metal? There has to be a tipping point where it will become profitable to explore trash and recycling services than keep launching materials from earth at a current cost of around $3000usd/kg. Even if this is reduced to 1/10th the cost, it doesn't seem sustainable.
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There has to be a tipping point where it will become profitable to explore trash and recycling services than keep launching materials from earth
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is."
Do I really need to complete that quote and explain the relative density of satellites to orbital volume?
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I would reply with Asimov's famous The Last Question [princeton.edu].
Just because the question won't be answered in your lifetime doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile or uninteresting question.
The FCC? (Score:2)
"The FCC remains the only agency to license virtually every commercial space mission that touches the United States"
What if a satellite doesn't have a radio on board?
Seriously. The FCC? We couldn't find an organization beter suited to managing space, orbits and other aspects of flight?
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Perhaps that organization could even have space embedded in its name?
That was my response when I read an article about this last week, why is the FCC talking about orbital manufacturing, they have approximately zero dogs in that fight.
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I'm also too lazy to Google it, so I'm wasting my keystrokes wondering if this originally was because pretty much everything launched into space has one or more radio transmitters, and once they're up there, they have the ultimate "high-ground" / ability to interfere with many things on earth.
Just look at the photo of "junk" in space (Score:1)
Salvage 1 (Score:2)
No worries! Andy Griffith has the problem covered!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
Jurisdiction issues (Score:2)
Doesn't the FAA have oversight of space?
Is the FCC trying to piss off the FAA because of the altimeter problem?
Relevant article from 2019.
https://groundbasedspacematter... [groundbase...atters.com]
US only? (Score:2)
So, the rest of the world can launch stuff however they want I guess.
It would have been better if an international organisation stepped in and set up the rules.
Am sure the UN or some other body got some standing on this.
Orbital Police (Score:2)
Once SpaceX gets Starship working the US government should use one to launch a fleet of "Orbital Police" satellites equipped with little rocket nets. The police just kind of float around the earth and whenever a rogue chunk of space junk wanders into a busy orbit they toss a net into its projected path. Once it's captured the net fires little boosters to drag the item into a heavily decaying orbit where it burns up within a few days or weeks.
I realize space is big, but as long as our tracking and projecti
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The issue is the relative velocities between your "net" and the "junk" We don't have anything that could stop a kilo of material that's traveling 7.8 kilometers/second, which is a standard LEO velocity.
No vision (Score:2)
"No one imagined commercial space tourism taking hold, no one believed crowd-funded satellites and mega constellations at low earth orbit were possible, and no one could have conceived of the sheer popularity of space entrepreneurship," reads a statement Friday from the chair of America's Federal Communications Commission. "But it's all happening...."
I'm sorry, but this has all been foreseen a long time ago. Trying to claim that nothing could ever happen outside of NASA, ESA or Roscosmos merely shows how shortsighted you are. Even Nasa toyed with the idea.
Sounds good... (Score:1)
The US needs to do the same with the country's doctrine.
Many things in the Constitution have varied interpretations by the ruling parties.
It's time we brought our Constitution into the 21st Century, too.