Senate Commerce Committee leaders push bill for space debris cleanup

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senior senators has introduced legislation designed to kickstart commercial development of technologies to clean up dangerous space junk, propelled by an interagency demonstration program that includes the Defense Department.

The Orbital Sustainability (ORBITS) Act [PDF] was introduced Monday by chair and ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Space and Science subcommittee, Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., and Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wy., respectively; and the full committee chair and ranking member, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wa., and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.

The bill would create a “first of its kind demonstration program” that would “focus on research, development, and demonstration of technologies capable of safely carrying out successful Active Debris Remediation (ADR) missions and jumpstarting a new market for these services,” according to a press release from Hickenlooper’s office.

“Space debris endangers everything from global communications to advanced weather forecasting to human space exploration,” Hickenlooper said in the release.

“There are more than 900,000 pieces of space junk passing over our heads every day, including abandoned Government satellites,” said Cantwell. “This bill will jumpstart the technology development needed to remove the most dangerous junk before it knocks out a satellite, crashes into a NASA mission, or falls to the ground and hurts someone. We must continue to explore space, and we have to do it safely.”

Wicker in his statement noted that the bill addresses the “important aspect” of active debris removal. This includes everything from space tugs — what one Space Force official called “trash trucks” in space — to pull dead satellites out of useful orbits, to tethers that would drag satellites from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) back into the atmosphere to burn up in their fiery descent to Earth, to sticky foam webs designed to catch tiny (but still potentially deadly) debris pieces.

Secure World Foundation’s Brian Weeden, an expert on debris issues, enthusiastically welcomed the proposed legislation.

“I think the ORBITS Act is an excellent proposal and want to commend Senators Hickenlooper, Wicker, Cantwell, and Lummis for putting this legislation forward. It’s the first serious effort from Congress to try and address some of the major gaps in current US efforts to deal with the threat posed by orbital debris,” he told Breaking Defense.

“Orbital debris remediation is one of the main areas where the US is falling behind other countries, and this bill would help put America back in a leadership position on making space more sustainable for all to use,” Weeden added.

The bill has five provisions, each tasking various government departments and agencies with specific actions:

Orbital Debris Remediation List

The proposed bill directs NASA, in coordination with the DoD, the Commerce Department and the National Space Council, “to publish a list of debris objects that pose the greatest risk to the safety of orbiting spacecraft and on-orbit activities.” This effort would not have to start from scratch, as in 2021 a group of experts from 13 countries published such a list, mainly comprising large objects with high mass.

Active Orbital Debris Remediation Demonstration Program

This section would put NASA in charge of establishing “a demonstration program to partner with industry in developing technology for remediating debris objects through repurposing or removal from orbit” using at least two industry teams to “promote competition.”

It also asks NASA to look for international partners who could expand the demonstration to include debris created by their own government or industry activities. (Under international law, the country that launched the spacecraft creating the debris is the owner of the debris and responsible if it causes harm to spacecraft or people on the ground.)

Active Debris Remediation (ADR) Services

The proposed legislation further encourages the US government to buy services from industry partners, “once they succeed in the demonstration and are commercially available.” The bill caveats, however, that US investment will need to be predicated on an assessment of “long-term demand.” The long-standing question of whether a business case can ever be made for commercial debris removal services has in fact been an inhibitor to corporate investment in developing the technologies to do so.

Interestingly, Space Force has shown more interest than NASA recently in helping commercial companies kick start outside investor interest. The service’s innovation hub, SpaceWERX, in January opened its Orbital Prime contest aimed at accelerating development of new dual-use tech for ADR.

Uniform Orbital Debris Standards

If passed, the ORBITS Act would require the National Space Council to update within one year the current Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices (ODMSP) used by US government space missions, including DoD missions. Specifically, the bill “encourages” the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates launch and re-entry of spacecraft, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates use of radio frequency spectrum by satellite operators, to subsequently use any updated standards.

The review should include consideration that the number of satellites in LEO (between about 100 kilometers above the Earth to 2,000 kilometers) is increasingly almost exponentially, due to the explosion of large satellite constellations. Other issues to be addressed include collision risk; casualty probability; post-mission disposal of space systems; time to disposal or de-orbit; spacecraft collision avoidance and automated identification capability; and the ability to track orbital debris of decreasing size.”

The last update to the standards took place in December 2019, after a bruising interagency battle over the so-called 25-year rule that requires operators in LEO to de-orbit dead satellites within that timeframe. In July, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy initiated a new review of that rule in its “National Orbital Debris Implementation Plan” [PDF].

Meanwhile, the FCC back in April 2020 proposed its own draft revision to the ODMSP, and then followed up with a proposed re-consideration of the 25-year rule. And on Sept. 8, the FCC proposed changing its requirements to demand that licensees de-orbit their spacecraft in LEO within five years — a proposal that the commissioners will consider during their Sept. 29 meeting.

Finally, this section also would require the Biden administration to “encourage other nations to align their regulations” with those of the US.

Space Traffic Coordination Standard Practices

Lastly, the proposed bill directs the Commerce Department, “in coordination with the National Space Council and the FCC, to develop and promote standard practices for avoiding near misses and collisions between spacecraft in orbit.”

The Trump Administration’s 2018 Space Policy Directive-3 (SPD-3) 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 to US space assets, especially from Russia and China. The Commerce Department subsequently tapped the Office of Space Commerce, which sits under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to do the job —with the intent of elevating that office to its own bureau to enable creation of a civil regime for space traffic management (STM) to ensure safe operations.

The question of STM already is firmly on the White House agenda, with DoD and Commerce announcing a framework agreement at last Friday’s meeting of the National Space Council, and Commerce also announcing a series of moves to begin developing capabilities for space tracking using commercial firms.