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U.S. Commerce Department To Take Over Space Traffic Cop Role Irene Klotz  The thousands of smallsats heading to launchpads in 5-10 years promise seamless, global connectivity, near real-time Earth imagery and navigation services for our self-driving cars. But whether they will deliver depends in part on how well the birds share increasingly congested low Earth orbit (LEO). Legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on April 24 transitions the role of space traffic cop from the Air Force, which has been handling the job by default since the dawn of the space age, to the Department of Commerce. The American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act, H.R. 2809, passed by voice vote with bipartisan support. It now moves to the Senate. In parallel, the National Space Council, headed by Vice President Mike Pence, is recommending President Donald Trump similarly shift responsibility for issuing space traffic notifications to the Commerce Department as part of a regulatory overhaul aimed at creating a “one-stop shop” for U.S. companies wishing to operate in LEO and beyond.  “Since the launch of Sputnik in 1957, more than 43,000 objects have been launched into space. Nearly half of those objects are still in orbit today, yet only a few thousand still serve a useful purpose. All others are considered debris, an unfortunate byproduct of decades of human activity in space,” Andrew Abraham, with The Aerospace Corp. Center for Space Policy and Strategy, writes in a recently released policy paper.

Credit: The Aerospace Corp.

The Air Force tracks about 20,000 objects about as big as a softball or larger in Earth orbit, but that number is expected to grow exponentially due to improved surveillance technology (an S-band digital array radar, capable of seeing objects the size of a marble in LEO, is expected to begin operating in 2019) and upcoming mega-constellations of satellites.  “We are in a rapidly changing world,” says Aerospace Corp. Vice President Jamie Morin. “If these large constellations in LEO for communications and other purposes go up as planned . . . we could do more in 5-10 years by a factor of two, three or more than we have since Sputnik. This is a pretty important period of time.” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who has embraced commercial space as a way to grow the U.S. economy, says his agency will learn from the Air Force and take over space traffic management notifications as it gains expertise, insight and operational experience. “Our mutual understanding is things are only going to get handed over as they are seamless [with] total assurance it is going to work right,” he said on the sidelines of the April 16-19 Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.  To kick off the process, Ross says the agencies are talking about embedding personnel in each other’s organization. “What’s not going to happen is there’s a switch turned one day and suddenly it’s a whole new ballgame. . . . It’s going to be much more evolutionary, with a lot of training in between,” he says.  The Air Force tracks about 1,900 active satellites, not all of which are capable of maneuvering. Last year, satellite operators reported 102 collision-avoidance maneuvers in near Earth orbit and seven in deep space to the 18th Space Control Sqdn. (SPCS), a space surveillance unit located at Vandenberg AFB in California.  The 18th SPCS continuously monitors tens of thousands of man-made objects in Earth orbit, predicts their future orbits and compares that information against all objects in a database generated by the Space Surveillance Network, which uses a combination of ground- and space-based radars and optical telescopes to track and characterize objects circling Earth.  The 18th SPCS compares the predicted orbital characteristics of all space objects to determine if two are going to closely approach each other, a process known as Conjunction Assessment. If a close approach between two objects meets reporting criteria, 18 SPCS issues notifications via its public website, Space-Track.org.  “Two types of notifications are automatically disseminated: conjunction data messages (CDM) and close-approach notification (CAN) warnings. CDMs are provided as data to help satellite operators plan for and mitigate risk; most CDMs do not meet high-concern criteria. CAN warnings are only provided for close approaches that meet high-concern criteria,” the Air Force writes in an email.  In 2017, the 18th SPCS issued more than 4 million CDMs, but only 20 per day met the very high-concern level, the Air Force said.  The same level of spaceflight safety services is provided to all active satellite operators and owners, including those operating cubesats, whose 10-cm2 (1.5-in.2) size is about the smallest that can be optimally tracked by the Space Surveillance Network.