'Rocks' Looming Threat to Safe Space Operations, Iridium CEO Says
The orbital debris problem not being talked about enough is avoiding "rocks" -- satellites over which the operator loses control -- Iridium CEO Matt Desch said Wednesday at the Secure World Foundation space sustainability summit. "It's basically a missile ... to create more debris." There's lack of discussion in the industry about rocks because it doesn't want to invite reliability standards, he said. If just a fraction of satellites in a constellation fail, it could be a significant danger if that constellation is made up thousands of satellites, he said.
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On space sustainability more broadly, industry left to its own devices doesn't have incentive enough to always follow best practices, and there needs to be incentives from government and a global rules regime, Desch said. He said industry incentives now are "perverse," with technology trends toward smaller and reprogrammable satellites meaning also likely sacrifices in reliability.
Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said government should play a role in providing incentives to operate in a clean way, with those incentives ranging from technology and coordination to space situational awareness data. He said perhaps someday there could be a penalties regime for "making a big mess."
Rocks might not ever be solved, but in-orbit cleanup "will become a booming business over the next decade," Hart said. One question is who pays, with it likely being governments at least initially, he said. Technology for dealing with big objects isn't too far off, but smaller orbital debris management might not be solved soon. One worry of a sanitation-centric focus is that it could mean operators become less incentivized to care about rocks, because someone will clean it up, Desch said.
If there were broad norms about end-of-life disposal and about sharing best practices, that could have a demonstrable effect improving space sustainability, said Iridium Vice President-Satellite Operations and Ground Development Walt Everetts. U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office Policy Head-Space Security and Advanced Threats David Edmondson said there's a need for norms on satellite proximity operations, but norms could be especially difficult to come by due to the need for industry and international participation and the security implications. Hokkaido University international politics professor Kazuto Suzuki said international discussions on norms often get held up by the overlap between safe space operations and national security concerns.
Space operators could easily face a situation where they're "heavily impeded" in a decade or two, Hart said, saying he would hope to see the issue at least being discussed in Congress. There's no global consensus on dealing with cleanup issues, and if takes a catastrophe to galvanize action, "that will be too late," Desch said.
Iridium's Desch said the 2009 collision of an Iridium satellite with a Russian one substantially changed the company's approach to warnings about possible collisions. Over the past decade, Iridium has moved one of its satellites 437 times, he said; prior to 2009, it never did since the warnings were of an object coming within a kilometer of one its satellites. He said it has deorbited all but one of the satellites from its original constellation. It activated its second-generation Next constellation early this year (see 1902060025).