INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The trade organizations count the largest Western commercial satellite operators among their members: SpaceX, Amazon, Eutelsat OneWeb,
Planet Labs, Iridium, SES, Intelsat, and Spire
These are the companies with the most at stake in the debate over the future of space traffic coordination
Industry sources told Ars that some companies are concerned a catastrophic collision in low-Earth orbit might trigger a wave of burdensome
regulations, an outcome they would like to avoid."Without funding for space traffic coordination, US commercial and government satellite
industry to relocate overseas," the industry groups warned.
Members of the 18th Space Defense Combat Squadron observe orbital data
at?Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, on October 4, 2024.
Credit:
US Space Force/David Dozoretz
The military currently performs the spaceflight safety mission, providing up to a
million collision warnings per day to give satellite operators a heads-up that their spacecraft will encounter another object as they speed
around the Earth at nearly 5 miles per second
A collision at those velocities would endanger numerous other satellites, including the International Space Station
This happened in 2009 with the accidental collision of a functional commercial communications satellite and a defunct Russian spacecraft,
adding more than 2,000 pieces of debris to busy orbital traffic lanes.Ideally, the Space Force issues its warnings in time for a satellite
operator to maneuver their spacecraft out of the path of a potential collision
Satellite operators might also have more precise information on the location of their spacecraft and determine that they don't need to
perform any collision avoidance maneuver.The military's Space Surveillance Network (SSN) tracks more than 47,000 objects in orbit
nearly 2,700 satellites were launched into Earth orbit last year, bringing the total number of active satellites to 11,539, a threefold
increase over the number of operating spacecraft in 2020.Space Force officials are eager to exit the business of warning third-party
satellite operators, including rivals such as Russia and China, of possible collisions in orbit
The military would prefer to focus on managing ever-growing threats from satellites, an intensive effort that requires continual monitoring
as other nations' increasingly sophisticated spacecraft maneuver from one orbit to another.
