Commerce Should Take DoD Space Safety Mission: Study

WASHINGTON: The long-awaited report to Congress on space traffic management (STM) recommends the Commerce Department take over the Pentagon’s responsibility for warnings of potential collisions in space — finding that data needed for space safety is a “public good” the US government should make available to the public.

If Congress accepts the recommendation by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), Commerce officials say they will work with the Defense Department to pool resources for buying commercial space situational awareness (SSA) data. Indeed, these officials say, DoD and Commerce already have begun planing for how they can best share costs and data, as well as avoid duplication.

“We’re working in lockstep with kind of the planning for the future in that area as well with DoD,” one DoC official told reporters on background today. “They look at the space domain awareness mission as kind of being fed by a lot of commercial SSA activities as well. Even though it might be for a different purpose on the military side, we’re trying to do it in conjunction, to make sure that we leverage the best buying power.”

Commerce, in a May cost estimate cited in the NAPA report, puts its own costs for buying commercial SSA data between $57.4 million and $72.4 million through 2024.

Those estimates do not include any spending by DoD to buy commercial data to augment military sensors for its (newly named) Space Domain Awareness mission to detect and assess adversary spacecraft as potential threats. DoD did not respond by press time to a request for comment about its own plans for buying commercial data.

The NAPA report in essence accepts the Trump Administration’s 2018 Space Policy Directive-3 (SPD-3), which ordered the transfer of space object tracking and collision warning authority for civil and commercial space to Commerce in order to free the military to focus on growing threats, especially from Russia and China, to US space assets. DoD, for its part, has been itching to ditch the mission since almost when it was first charged with it in 2009.

To take up the STM mantle, DoC has proposed to elevate its Office of Space Commerce (OSC), led by Kevin O’Connell, out from under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and boost its funding.

“The Panel found that, for these duties to be executed properly, an agency must be prepared to liaise with private sector and other government stakeholders as well as be able to support the necessary technical and operational requirements inherent in the provision of SSA and STM services. This entity must be regularly funded and provided standing departmental support,” the report states.

The report is less than complimentary about DoD’s current management, finding that “DoD’s mission and culture pose some inherent challenges to meet the above objectives for the commercial sphere:”

“As the space economy expands and new pressures confront the orbital environment, DoD is facing challenges in providing up-to-date surveillance and warning services for the non-national security-related sector. That sector requires much more precise information than the DoD system was designed for. Also, the DoD system is not scalable to meet the demands of a growing number of objects in space and to deal with an increasing number of space operators. After several years of efforts, DoD has not yet successfully upgraded the computer systems that underpin its own monitoring and analysis capabilities. There have been multiple failed acquisition programs over the last two decades to try and replace those systems at significant expense.

Commercial operators increasingly view today’s DoD surveillance and warning system as inadequate to achieve safe operations in today’s commercial space environment.”

The report urges Congress to move “without delay” to provide OSC with both “requisite on-orbit authorities that would allow it to promulgate STM regulations for operations that fall outside the current licensing and continuing supervision framework,” as well as funds “to assess and employ fee-for-service to build out the office as needed.”

As Breaking D readers know, Congress has been reluctant to fund such a move  — in part due to the belief by some lawmakers that the FAA would be better suited for the job; but also in part because of a long-standing grudge against Commerce Department head Wilbur Ross for what lawmakers have seen as  snubs. (House appropriators in June again refused to provide funds; citing the desire to see the outcome of the NAPA study.)

The study concurs with DoC’s findings that establishing an initial STM capability — one focused on improving the quality of current SSA data and collision warnings provided to commercial, civil and foreign operators — will cost between $153 million to $218.6 million through 2024, and hold steady thereafter.

The NAPA report explains that DoD will continue to pay for funding its Space Surveillance Network of ground-based radar and telescopes (both on the ground and in space); operations and management of the network; all classified infrastructure and any recapitalization of its own mission systems.

NAPA asserts that “basic SSA/STM data are a public good” and that a “dedicated” government agency is required to disseminate such data — including where objects are in orbit and where they are moving to over time — to space operators for safety reasons. While this “basic” service should be provided for free (as DoD data now is provided via the SpaceTrack website), the report says that in the longer term, more robust analytical services might be provided under a “fee for service” model.

Industry representatives and outside experts, many polled by NAPA, welcomed the study.

“It’s a carefully-done capstone effort, neatly incorporating years of prior work, and reaching the correct decision: DOC is the appropriate lead agency for space traffic coordination and management and Congress needs to fund the efforts now to ensure continuing leadership in commercial space,” Andrew D’Uva, of Providence Access Co., told me in an email today.

In a Twitter feed analyzing the report today, Secure World Foundation’s Brian Weeden wrote: “All said, I think it’s a really good report that confirms and adds to the existing research. There should be no excuse for Congress to act ASAP and implement SPD-3 so we can start to move forward on this important issue.”