Mike French, AIA, (left) moderates a Fireside Chat with Dr. Richard Dalbello, NOAA, (center) and Travis Langster, U.S. DoD (right). (Space Symposium)
SPACE SYMPOSIUM — The Commerce Department’s embryonic effort to build a space traffic management regime to help commercial operators keep their satellites safe will be dependent on tracking data provided by the Defense Department, at least at first, according to key officials from both sides.
“Initially, we’re going to be relying heavily on the DoD core data that comes from the the Space Surveillance Network that they run,” said Richard DalBello, director of the Office of Space Commerce (OSC).
Speaking on April 21 at the Space Foundation’s annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, DalBello added that the new system will be “leveraging new data sources” over time. “There’s a tremendous amount of commercial capability out there,” he said.
Travis Langster, DoD principal director of space policy, appeared on the symposium stage with DalBello and echoed his remarks.
“Certainly, we have robust data in the Department of Defense, and the Department of Commerce should be able to leverage that data to the fullest extent — again, keeping in mind the consideration of what’s available in the commercial marketplace,” Langster said.
He added that beyond the data, DoD is working with Commerce to ensure that its expertise in crunching space observation data also is being passed along.
“I’d also like to point out it’s not only about the data, there also has to be work to get after how do you process that data,” Langster said. “The analytical results, at the end of the day, that’s what’s going to inform and provide space flight safety. So, we’re certainly working through these working groups, ensuring that the Department of Commerce leverages our expertise, and capabilities and years of operating systems for spaceflight safety, as we do this transition.”
He added that the ongoing bilateral discussions are “fairly technical right now,” but said they are “on a good path” and DoD is “looking forward to taking the next steps.”
As a result of the 2018 White House Space Policy Directive-3, Commerce has been working to relieve DoD of the burden for monitoring the ever-more crowded heavens and providing warnings to non-military space operators about potential on-orbit collisions.
As first reported by Breaking Defense, Commerce in January issued a draft plan for a space traffic “basic” service, called Traffic Coordination System for Space, or TraCSS for short.
On April 12, OCS held a webinar for interested industry to comment on what space situational awareness services Commerce should offer operators for free, and what services should be left to the growing number of commercial space tracking firms. (As DalBello often has stressed, Commerce has no desire to undercut the burgeoning domestic market.)
“We’re focused like laser beam on trying to be up and running [TraCSS] phase one in third quarter of 2024. We will be doing a series of industry engagement sessions and so if you’re interested please check our website,” DalBello told the symposium audience.
The goal of the transition plan for the Space Force and US Space Command is to free up resources and operators to concentrate on space domain awareness — that is, keeping near-real time tabs on adversary spacecraft, understanding their capabilities, and being able gauge any threats to US space assets.
“We will need to perform space domain awareness and that comes down to not only [space situational awareness] but understanding and characterizing, predicting and attributing what’s happening in the domain, being able to get as close as we can to understanding intent, and having the capabilities to respond to activities in space that threaten our national security interests,” Langster said.
The Space Surveillance Network, operated by Space Command, is the key sensor set for monitoring satellites and dangerous space junk. It comprises ground- and space-based telescopes and terrestrially-based radar that track satellites and dangerous space junk.
While the network is most comprehensive space monitoring system in the world, as pointed out in new study by the Government Accountability Office it nonetheless has some long-standing gaps in capability, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere.
In addition, many of the network’s sensor systems and their space-tracking capabilities are classified, thus DoD has not been willing to share all of the detailed information about on-orbit activity it gathers with non-governmental and foreign space operators. The result has been years of grumbling by commercial operators that the warnings they receive from DoD are not adequate for decision-making about whether to employ costly maneuvers to avoid on-orbit crashes.
While DoD and Commerce have signed a memorandum of agreement about cooperation in building up a new civil space monitoring capability, that document does not include the devilish details about how Space Command will be able to leap over the classification hurdle in turning over its observational data to TraCCS. Instead, that is one of the key issues still being hashed out by the joint working groups.
That said, DoD and Commerce in December issued first contracts under a pilot program to build out TraCCS for satellites in medium Earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit using only commercial data, but then plugging it into Space Command’s cloud-based Unified Data Library as a dissemination tool. The seven companies participating are COMSPOC Corp., ExoAnalytic Solutions, Kayhan Space, KBR, NorthStar Earth & Space Inc., Slingshot Aerospace and the Space Data Association.
