Space Traffic Management and Defense
Adam Kall, Director of Science
4 minute read
Activity in space has been growing steadily since the first satellite in 1957, but this rate is increasing dramatically as reduced launch costs enable constellations of hundreds and thousands of satellites to be launched quickly. The situation has become one of dangerous disregard for organization, as evidenced by an event on September 2nd, 2019 when the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Aeolus Earth observation satellite had to maneuver out of the way of a Starlink constellation satellite. When this potential collision was uncovered, the two operators struggled to communicate on what combined action should be taken, and while the end effect was thankfully safe, it could easily have resulted in disaster had both sides decided to do nothing.
Managing traffic in space can be analogous to managing air space on Earth. In the beginning when there were only a few vehicles in existence capable of flying it would have been easy to track each one and make sure it was safe, but simultaneously there was no infrastructure for this and no need as the risk of collision was remarkably small. Then the governments of the world started to engage in flying, and while each created its own method for managing their air space, the overall number of flying vehicles was small enough to not worry about constant vigilance. Then commercial interests started to take over, both large expensive airliners and smaller private craft, and a new system of air traffic control was introduced to manage the flights.
Space needs its own space traffic control organization, but unlike the case of air space, it is not possible to assign this responsibility to individual countries. With the exception of specific geostationary orbits, satellites transit the sky and travel over multitudes of countries. This naturally leads to the conclusion for an international organization for the management of space traffic, or at least the traffic in low earth orbit. This body will need the wisdom to create policy on how to manage potential collision risk, the buy-in for operators to follow their regulations, and the power to counter bad actors who do not follow the standards everyone else agrees to.
Already organizations like NASA, ESA, JAXA, Roscosmos, and the United Nations Office on Outer Space Affairs have created internal guidelines for how to avoid collisions in space. It is not important for the creation of a space traffic control to know what structure the organization will have, where it is located, or how specialists and regulation creators are selected. Knowing the specialists exist and have already completed some of the work required is enough to believe they could come together to make the international standard.
International buy-in to the standards will be dependent on the difficulty of implementing the standards and the risks associated with not following the standards. There are a variety of ways that operators could be encouraged to follow the policies, but determining the best of these can be an activity left to the specialists rather than this opinion piece. The key factor to remember is that there is currently almost no strong international cooperation among the space industry, so any progress on this front is progress towards a safer space. In addition, as more operators follow the standards, even more operators will be motivated to join, hopefully creating a feedback loop to acceptance.
The final critical component is what to do with bad actors. There are international methods by which satellite operators who pose a danger to other cooperative space assets could be discouraged, such as international courts or sanctions, but these do nothing to stop an asset that is not under the control of anyone, like a piece of space debris. Blame could be assigned for pieces of space debris, but it would not change the fact that the space debris is still in orbit and presents a threat to critical space assets. This makes it necessary for international cooperation to lead the removal of space debris, not funded by companies and nations deemed responsible for the debris, but by all current and future missions which rely on a safe environment of orbit.
International organization is possible, and in the case of space, necessary for a smooth transition to a sky crowded with government and private space assets. The experts needed to form such an organization already exist in their respective nations and agencies. The necessary buy-in from operators to make the organization practical is attainable and will increase future participation. Finally, the capability to deal with rogue nations threatening space exists and the capability to deal with uncontrolled space debris is also readily available, thanks to companies like Kall Morris Inc.