space junk

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Nearly everyone opposes Trump’s plan to kill space traffic control program

Department of Commerce, military space, Space, space debris, space force, space junk, space policy / /

The trade organizations count the largest Western commercial satellite operators among their members: SpaceX, Amazon, Eutelsat OneWeb, Planet Labs, Iridium, SES, Intelsat, and Spire. These are the companies with the most at stake in the debate over the future of space traffic coordination. Industry sources told Ars that some companies are concerned a catastrophic collision in low-Earth orbit might trigger a wave of burdensome regulations, an outcome they would like to avoid.

“Without funding for space traffic coordination, US commercial and government satellite operators would face greater risks—putting critical missions in harm’s way, raising the cost of doing business, and potentially driving US industry to relocate overseas,” the industry groups warned.

Members of the 18th Space Defense Combat Squadron observe orbital data at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, on October 4, 2024. Credit: US Space Force/David Dozoretz

The military currently performs the spaceflight safety mission, providing up to a million collision warnings per day to give satellite operators a heads-up that their spacecraft will encounter another object as they speed around the Earth at nearly 5 miles per second. A collision at those velocities would endanger numerous other satellites, including the International Space Station. This happened in 2009 with the accidental collision of a functional commercial communications satellite and a defunct Russian spacecraft, adding more than 2,000 pieces of debris to busy orbital traffic lanes.

Ideally, the Space Force issues its warnings in time for a satellite operator to maneuver their spacecraft out of the path of a potential collision. Satellite operators might also have more precise information on the location of their spacecraft and determine that they don’t need to perform any collision avoidance maneuver.

The military’s Space Surveillance Network (SSN) tracks more than 47,000 objects in orbit. Most of these objects are orbital debris, but there’s a growing number of active spacecraft as many operators—mainly SpaceX, Amazon, the Space Force, and China—deploy megaconstellations with hundreds to thousands of satellites.

The Satellite Industry Association reports that nearly 2,700 satellites were launched into Earth orbit last year, bringing the total number of active satellites to 11,539, a threefold increase over the number of operating spacecraft in 2020.

Under strain

Space Force officials are eager to exit the business of warning third-party satellite operators, including rivals such as Russia and China, of possible collisions in orbit. The military would prefer to focus on managing ever-growing threats from satellites, an intensive effort that requires continual monitoring as other nations’ increasingly sophisticated spacecraft maneuver from one orbit to another.

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Astroscale aced the world’s first rendezvous with a piece of space junk

Astroscale, Japan, JAXA, satellite servicing, Science, Space, space debris, space junk / /

Astroscale’s US subsidiary won a $25.5 million contract from the US Space Force in 2023 to build a satellite refueler that can hop around geostationary orbit. Like the ADRAS-J mission, this project is a public-private partnership, with Astroscale committing $12 million of its own money. In January, the Japanese government selected Astroscale for a contract worth up to $80 million to demonstrate chemical refueling in low-Earth orbit.

The latest win for Astroscale came Thursday, when the Japanese Ministry of Defense awarded the company a contract to develop a prototype satellite that could fly in geostationary orbit and collect information on other objects in the domain for Japan’s military and intelligence agencies.

“We are very bullish on the prospects for defense-related business,” said Nobu Matsuyama, Astroscale’s chief financial officer.

Astroscale’s other projects include a life extension mission for an unidentified customer in geostationary orbit, providing a similar service as Northrop Grumman’s Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV).

So, can Astroscale really do all of this? In an era of a militarized final frontier, it’s easy to see the usefulness of sidling up next to a “non-cooperative” satellite—whether it’s to refuel it, repair it, de-orbit it, inspect it, or (gasp!) disable it. Astroscale’s demonstration with ADRAS-J showed it can safely operate near another object in space without navigation aids, which is foundational to any of these applications.

So far, governments are driving demand for this kind of work.

Astroscale raised nearly $400 million in venture capital funding before going public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange last June. After quickly spiking to nearly $1 billion, the company’s market valuation has dropped to about $540 million as of Thursday. Astroscale has around 590 full-time employees across all its operating locations.

Matsuyama said Astroscale’s total backlog is valued at about 38.9 billion yen, or $260 million. The company is still in a ramp-up phase, reporting operating losses on its balance sheet and steep research and development spending that Matsuyama said should max out this year.

“We are the only company that has proved RPO technology for non-cooperative objects, like debris, in space,” Okada said last month.

“In simple terms, this means approach and capture of objects,” Okada continued. “This capability did not exist before us, but one’s mastering of this technology enables you to provide not only debris removal service, but also orbit correction, refueling, inspection, observation, and eventually repair and reuse services.”

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Trash from the International Space Station may have hit a house in Florida

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This cylindrical object, a few inches in size, fell through the roof of Alejandro Otero's home in Florida last month.

Enlarge / This cylindrical object, a few inches in size, fell through the roof of Alejandro Otero’s home in Florida last month.

A few weeks ago, something from the heavens came crashing through the roof of Alejandro Otero’s home, and NASA is on the case.

In all likelihood, this nearly two-pound object came from the International Space Station. Otero said it tore through the roof and both floors of his two-story house in Naples, Florida.

Otero wasn’t home at the time, but his son was there. A Nest home security camera captured the sound of the crash at 2: 34 pm local time (19: 34 UTC) on March 8. That’s an important piece of information because it is a close match for the time—2: 29 pm EST (19: 29 UTC)—that US Space Command recorded the reentry of a piece of space debris from the space station. At that time, the object was on a path over the Gulf of Mexico, heading toward southwest Florida.

This space junk consisted of depleted batteries from the ISS, attached to a cargo pallet that was originally supposed to come back to Earth in a controlled manner. But a series of delays meant this cargo pallet missed its ride back to Earth, so NASA jettisoned the batteries from the space station in 2021 to head for an unguided reentry.

Otero’s likely encounter with space debris was first reported by WINK News, the CBS affiliate for southwest Florida. Since then, NASA has recovered the debris from the homeowner, according to Josh Finch, an agency spokesperson.

Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center will analyze the object “as soon as possible to determine its origin,” Finch told Ars. “More information will be available once the analysis is complete.”

Ars reported on this reentry when it happened on March 8, noting that most of the material from the batteries and the cargo carrier would have likely burned up as they plunged through the atmosphere. Temperatures would have reached several thousand degrees, vaporizing most of the material before it could reach the ground.

The entire pallet, including the nine disused batteries from the space station’s power system, had a mass of more than 2.6 metric tons (5,800 pounds), according to NASA. Size-wise, it was about twice as tall as a standard kitchen refrigerator. It’s important to note that objects of this mass, or larger, regularly fall to Earth on guided trajectories, but they’re usually failed satellites or spent rocket stages left in orbit after completing their missions.

In a post on X, Otero said he is waiting for communication from “the responsible agencies” to resolve the cost of damages to his home.

Hello. Looks like one of those pieces missed Ft Myers and landed in my house in Naples.

Tore through the roof and went thru 2 floors. Almost his my son.

Can you please assist with getting NASA to connect with me? I’ve left messages and emails without a response. pic.twitter.com/Yi29f3EwyV

— Alejandro Otero (@Alejandro0tero) March 15, 2024

If the object is owned by NASA, Otero or his insurance company could make a claim against the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act, according to Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi.

“It gets more interesting if this material is discovered to be not originally from the United States,” she told Ars. “If it is a human-made space object which was launched into space by another country, which caused damage on Earth, that country would be absolutely liable to the homeowner for the damage caused.”

This could be an issue in this case. The batteries were owned by NASA, but they were attached to a pallet structure launched by Japan’s space agency.

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