Facing Heavy Pushback, FCC Amending Parts of Orbital Debris Draft Order
The FCC-proposed satellite operator indemnification requirement that has been challenged by operators (see 2004140052) is likely moving from the orbital debris draft order on commissioners' Thursday agenda to the accompanying Further NPRM, satellite officials told us. An FCC official said calls for the order to be delayed instead of being part of this week's agenda seem like a long shot, however.
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The agency is beefing up the questions on requiring a post-mission satellite disposal bond, we were told. Some other draft order items might be moving to the FNPRM but not as many as industry wanted, said Satellite Industry Association Senior Director-Policy Therese Jones. She said petitioning for reconsideration of the order is an option, depending on what the agency adopts. A handful of nations require operators be insured but none has anything close to what the agency is proposing, she said. A satellite company counsel said a recon petition wouldn't be surprising, since many major FCC rulemakings see them, and the likelihood of litigation is less clear.
The agency continues to get satellite resistance. Numerous operators and the SmallSat Alliance urged delaying the proceeding, in docket 18-313 postings Friday. The Commercial Smallsat Spectrum Management Association said the FCC should make clear that differential drag also satisfies the maneuverability requirement. The group pushed for going back to the 600 kilometer maneuverability threshold originally floated, instead of the order's 400 kilometers, and a longer transition period for when the rule would take effect on already approved systems. It said the legal basis for the agency to impose the indemnification requirement is unclear. Boeing would support various issues such as the probability standards for collisions, the metrics for post-mission disposal reliability, the casualty probability risk and the probability metric for accident explosions being moved to the further notice. It said such issues as maneuverability and indemnification need to be explored more in a FNPRM.
The proposed debris rules update would "impose significant new costs and burdens," and a delay would allow for clarification of the proposal and then operators can better calculate the impact and share that information with the agency, said Lynk Global. The move to the 400 kilometer maneuverability threshold could add hundreds of thousands of dollars to each test system Lynk is building now and delay testing by six to 12 months, it said.
Planet Labs, in calls with commissioners' aides and the International Bureau (for example, see here) also urged moving the maneuverability requirement to the FNPRM so the agency could get feedback on re-establishing the maneuverability line at 600 kilometers and lengthening the transition period. The FCC didn't comment.
The order would create legal and regulatory compliance challenges because it conflicts in some ways with NASA-developed policies and standards and federal orbital debris mitigation standard practices, Amazon's Kuiper told aides in calls. By not applying NASA and ODMSP standards to collision- and casualty-risk analysis, the draft is contrary to the White House's coordinated national space policy, it said. The human casualty risk requirements it seeks to impose are inconsistent with ODMSP and NASA standards, the company said.
Not every operator opposes the proposal. Viasat said compared with the FCC's proposed collision risk standards, which would lead to minuscule odds of collisions on a given year even if tens of thousands of small satellites were in low earth orbit, NASA and ODMSP standards would translate into multiple collisions yearly. Responsible low earth orbit behavior necessitates such steps as large constellations having no overlap in their orbital altitudes, satellites having collision avoidance maneuverability, and operators ceasing launching after in-orbit failures, Iridium said.