Routes to Space Sustainability Discussed Against Smallsat Boom Backdrop
More willingness to name and shame bad actors and stronger international requirements that satellites be actively brought down from orbit after their missions expire instead of waiting for drag and gravity were suggested by space experts Tuesday at Secure World Foundation’s space sustainability summit on an increasingly crowded orbital domain. As the pace of space activities and number of actors grow, there needs to be a shift from academic discussions to real-world policy debates, said Secure World Executive Director Peter Martinez.
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The commercial space industry needs to call out bad actors that threaten the sustainability of space, and it’s surprising how mute the industry was after India’s anti-satellite weaponry testing earlier this year that created more orbital debris, said Planet Senior Director-Government Affairs Mark Mozena. The company was “awfully lonely” in criticizing India and received some U.S. political pressure to tone down its criticisms, he said. Lack of a global paradigm that requires someone be a good actor in space, along with that testing, “makes us very nervous,” he said.
Speakers said an international space traffic management rules regime needs to come both from the top down and bottom up, instead of either/or. A top-down approach means it ends up going as fast as the slowest participant and could inhibit progress on a national level, said Talal Al Kaissi, adviser to the UAE Space Agency director general. Lockheed Martin Vice President-Technology Policy and Regulation Jennifer Warren said international engagement doesn’t necessarily have to involve the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which could speed it along.
Space sustainability is important, but there also needs to be consideration of economics, said Kalpak Gude, Swarm general counsel. Governments should be setting standards “but allowing the marketplace to drive the proper solution,” Gude said.
Commercial space does have some self-created norms that are based on the Outer Space Treaty (OST), but the industry isn’t going to be deterred from new potential directions by the lack of norms there, said Jim Armor, Northrop Grumman director-government relations. He cited rendezvous operations like in-orbit servicing.
The debris problem stems from the fact rockets and satellites are designed and built for a particular mission, not for long-term existence in the punishing space environment, said Holger Krag, European Space Agency space debris office head. Far too few satellites are launched with the requirement they be actively deorbited after their missions are complete, he said, noting the quadrupling of the rate of launches worldwide over the past three years points to the problem intensifying.
There are an estimated 900,000 objects in orbit one centimeter or larger, all zipping around at such high velocities that even a collision with a one-centimeter piece could be catastrophic to a space mission, Krag said. The debris problem is particularly concentrated at the 800- to 900-kilometer altitude, which
is heavily used by earth observation satellites, he said. Debris at 400 kilometers will be brought down by atmospheric drag within a year, but 800-kilometers debris would have a 200-year orbit, he said.
There was some debate on the business viability for orbital debris removal. No business case exists for orbital debris removal, but that could change with government policy updates that would allow salvage and unleash some commercial ideas that could get at debris innovatively, Armor said. Replied Astroscale Managing Director Ron Lopez, there “most certainly” is a business case in end-of-life services and government funding of removal of larger debris. He likened the business to AAA for cars.
That space activity boom was triggered by emergence of small-satellite technologies and of an ma- chine learning-based analytics market, put space within the reach and interest of venture capital, said Bryce Space & Technology CEO Carissa Christensen. Those smallsats won’t replace big satellites wholesale, but they “enable different investors to play,” with the amount of venture capital spending on space skyrocketing since 2015, she said. VCs, when looking at the debris issue, see it as a business opportunity in the form of cleanup and satellite servicing, she said.
The future of space “is overwhelmingly commercial,” said Commerce Department Office of Space Commerce Director Kevin O’Connell, noting the agency is trying to figure out how to measure the size of the commercial space industry separately from aerospace. The U.S. “absolutely does not” want to be an international space “traffic cop,” with its chief interest being providing data so operators can decide whether or how to maneuver if a collision looks possible, he said.
Eight nations, including Australia, Bahrain, Poland and Turkey, launched space agencies in the past five years, said Regulus SpaceTech President Rogel Sese. The Philippines legislature approved one earlier this month and it awaits presidential sign off. Most emerging space nations haven’t ratified or didn’t sign the OST, and they need to be aware of responsibilities to ensuring the space environment as they build their space capabilities, he said. Established space nations “need to serve as role models,” and share technical and legal best practices, he said.