Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Close-calls in the cosmos. A new appraisal of civil traffic control is to be undertaken by the FAA and the Department of the Defense.
Credit: Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of the Defense are embarking on a pilot program to define the pathway forward on Space Traffic Management and what functions may be better suited for a civil agency.

This joint-appraisal is to start this summer, likely in the August time frame.

Funding details are expected in the forthcoming White House FY18 Defense budget request.

The pilot program was discussed during last week’s Fiscal Year 2018 Priorities and Posture of the National Security Space Enterprise before the House Committee on Armed Services’ Strategic Forces Subcommittee.

Air-centric

Lieutenant General David Buck, Commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Space, U.S. Strategic Command, testified May 19^th that the military recognizes that some Space Traffic Management (STM) tasks are not central to their military mission. Those tasks include things like debris mitigation and providing conjunction data messages to satellite operators.

“As part of the pilot program, I anticipate a small footprint of FAA representatives working side-by-side with our space operators this year,” Buck noted in written testimony.

Earth orbit is a junkyard of human-made space clutter.
Credit: Space Junk 3D, LLC. Melrae Pictures

Buck said that the FAA sees this “as a real opportunity to do things that are more like air-centric,” he told lawmakers, such as establishing norms of behavior and establishing patterns of safety in space flight.

“They [the FAA] see some goodness in this and they are anxious to take on specific aspects of the Space Traffic Management mission,” Buck added.

Safe space operations

The FAA’s George Nield, Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation, has previously outlined a Civil Space Traffic Management System (CSTMS).

The CSTMS would consist of the hardware, software, data and communications connectivity, and personnel that are needed to accept and process observations, create and maintain a catalog of space objects, perform safety-related analyses, and develop and distribute safety-related products and services.

The mission of the CSTMS would be to enhance the safety of space operations, and to preserve the space environment, Nield said March 30 during a Symposium on Space Situational Awareness, held in Washington, D.C. The meeting was organized by the Universities Space Research Association and the Space Policy Institute.

A CubeSat is deployed from the International Space Station.
Credit: NASA

Congested space

During that March meeting, Nield defined the challenges ahead. “Space is becoming more congested. Cubesats and other small satellites are being launched with increasing frequency. There are near-term plans for ‘Mega-constellations,’ with hundreds or even thousands of satellites,” he pointed out.

The Department of the Defense attempts to keep track of objects in space, “but they would like to be able to focus on national security issues, rather than on the safety of civil and commercial space operations,” Nield said.

However, there are no universally-accepted “Rules of the Road” for space operations, Nield said. “An increase in the number of collisions in space,” he said, “could put astronauts and critical national security spacecraft at risk, and even make some orbital regimes unusable for future operators.”

The crowded space environment may look like this a decade from now, with proposed mega-constellations.
Credit: Center for Space Policy & Strategy

Safety services

In his remarks last March, Nield said that the joint FAA and Department of Defense pilot effort is designed to demonstrate the ability of the FAA to provide orbital safety services as part of a Civil Space Traffic Management System.

Key steps in the process include being able to:

• Accept and process observations
• Compute orbital parameters and generate at least a partial catalog of space objects
• Analyze and assess potential conjunctions
• Generate collision avoidance warnings as required

Data produced during the pilot program will be compared and validated with Department of Defense data.

Important questions

In carrying out a pilot program, the FAA’s Nield explained, it could answer a set of important questions:

• In terms of completeness, accuracy, and timeliness, how would the products and services from an FAA-managed Civil Space Traffic Management System compare to those currently available from the Department of Defense (DoD)?
• What are the potential benefits of using observations from non-DoD sources, either instead of, or in addition to, the data currently being used by the DoD?
• Can innovative analysis techniques be used to decrease uncertainty and cut down on “false alarms” for potential collisions?
• Is it possible to increase transparency of the data and the process, while still protecting classified and/or sensitive national security information?