WASHINGTON — With skyrocketing space traffic increasing the risks of accidental collisions and misunderstandings that could lead to military conflicts, a new UN group is meeting in Vienna, Austria to try and hash out practical information sharing measures among nations.
The Expert Group on Space Situational Awareness (EG SSA) was initiated under the Science and Technical subcommittee of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) last July by the United Arab Emirates, which is serving as the chair. While the group has held two virtual “intercessionals” to kick start the discussions, the subcommittee’s annual session Feb. 2-13 represents the first time group members have met in person.
In a written statement Feb. 6, Ryan Guglietta, the US State Department representative to the meeting, welcomed the EG SSA, calling it “an unprecedented opportunity for Member States to convene their government and private sector technical experts to have substantive discussions on how to improve spaceflight safety.
“We are optimistic that the group can deliver practical, tangible outcomes that help all actors in space communicate better and avoid collisions,” he added.
The US delegation to the talks is being led by NASA and the State Department’s Permanent Mission to International Organizations in Vienna, a State Department official told Breaking Defense in an email.
“The United States supported the UAE’s efforts to create the SSA Expert Group in 2025 with a goal of improving how foreign countries share SSA-related data and enhance the safety of U.S. government and commercial space objects, particularly as a wide number of countries become active in space,” the spokesperson said.
And while the spokesperson didn’t elaborate which specific countries the US hopes to engage, other government officials said that China is at the top of the list.
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The Pentagon for years has notified Beijing about China’s potential on-orbit conjunctions using data from US Space Command’s (SPACECOM) Space Surveillance Network of radars and ground- and space-based sensors. Those notifications — which include information similar to that provided to US commercial operators — are provided via email to the Beijing Institute of Telecommunications and Tracking Technology (BITTT), a research unit of the PLA’s Aerospace Forces.
BITTT is the official Chinese government point of contact for its domestic operators with regard to issues of space safety, including collision avoidance.
In the past, SPACECOM rarely, if ever, got any kind of response from BITTT, a SPACECOM spokesperson previously told Breaking Defense.
For example, back in February 2022, in response to questions from Breaking Defense about Chinese allegations that two SpaceX Starlink satellites the previous December had nearly rammed China’s Tiangong space station, a SPACECOM spokesperson bemoaned the fact that there was no direct communication from Beijing about the potential collisions.
“The U.S. Government has repeatedly sought to improve bilateral sharing of spaceflight information with the PRC for nearly a decade. The USG has also consistently urged the PRC to utilize its designated points of contact for concerns relating to human spaceflight safety and emergency collision avoidance support,” the spokesperson said at the time.
However, according to the US government and industry officials, over the past year Beijing has begun reaching out about potential on-orbit crashes. In the most public example, in October the China National Space Agency for the first time initiated contact with NASA about a possible crash between satellites owned by the two space agencies and offered to move its satellite.
The communications pathway has been smoothed in part by a US government effort last year to craft cross-agency guidelines for communicating about SSA issues, slating BITTT as the main channel. As one official said, that helped “get our act together” so that the Chinese were not confused by contacts from multiple US sources.
Further, the interagency group in August 2025 issued to US commercial operators a similar set of best practices for mitigating potential on-orbit collisions with China. The guidance, obtained by Breaking Defense, explains when and how operators should contact BITTT following a SPACECOM notification about possible crash with a Chinese satellite, as well as when an operator simply wants to discuss safety precautions and/or maneuvers about its birds in the vicinity of Chinese spacecraft.
The thaw in bilateral SSA relations could help foster the UN negotiations, which according to the working group’s agenda include discussions of “enhanced global operational coordination on SSA data systems and harmonization of data formats across global SSA systems” and the creation of forums for regular information exchanges.
“In past dialogue and research work around US/China space safety coordination, I have found that Chinese stakeholders perceive a stronger need for government policy structure to enable them to engage directly on space safety,” said Ian Christensen, senior director of private sector programs at the Secure World Foundation.
“While the Expert Group is a truly multilateral process, and not in my view primarily about the US-China relationship, I’m hopeful it will contribute to the political conditions necessary to see further improvements in space safety information sharing between those two countries,” he added.
The group is expected to hold a series of meetings, both virtual and in person, between now and the COPUOS plenary meeting in 2028 when its results are due. The committee’s annual plenaries are usually held in May or June.