WASHINGTON — Senate appropriators have moved to rescue the Commerce Department’s space safety program for monitoring non-military satellites, giving a $50 million shot in the arm to the office in charge.
The Trump administration had requested only $11 million for the Office of Space Commerce, with just $1 million slated to essentially shelve past work on the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) program.
READ MORE: Whither TraCSS? DoD, industry face hard choices in showdown over Commerce spacewatch effort
But the Commerce, Justice and Science spending bill released on Thursday by Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, echoes language issued by House appropriators in May about the importance of TraCCS. The House bill also slated $50 million in FY27 funds for the Office of Space Commerce.
The fate of the TraCCS effort has been the subject of intense debate over the past couple of years, with commercial space monitoring firms growing increasingly frustrated with the slowness of the program’s development. The Commerce Department effort was launched nearly a decade ago due to Defense Department concerns about the increasing drain on its space monitoring resources as commercial space traffic continues to skyrocket.
The continuation of TraCCS development, at least for the moment, would lift concerns at the Defense Department, the Space Force and US Space Command that for the foreseeable future the military would be saddled with the job of warning nonmilitary space operators about pending on-orbit collisions.
The next step in the process is for the Senate and House appropriators to come together in conference committee to hash out their differences, and finalize an agreed upon bill. Whether that happens before the end of the legislative session at this point is anyone’s guess.
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