SPACE JUNK | Techdirt

Enter the new five year rule, which provides a two-year grandfather period to allow satellite operators to adjust. Satellites that are currently stumbling drunkenly around orbit with no purpose are exempt from the new rule.

The FCC Finally Starts Taking Space Junk Seriously

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the twinkle-twinkle dept

Mon, Sep 26th 2022 03:37pm - Karl Bode

While technologies like low orbit satellite can help shore up broadband access, they come with their own additional challenges. One being that services like Space X’s Starlink have cause potentially unavoidable light pollution, harming scientific research. The other being the exponential growth in space detritus, aka space junk, that will make space navigation increasingly difficult.

The FCC has generally been an absentee landlord on both issues, though last week finally announced it would be taking some basic steps to tackle the space junk problem. A new proposal by the agency would implement a five year limit for letting your dead satellite stick around in space:

The Commission will consider a Second Report and Order that would adopt rules requiring low-Earth orbit space station operators planning disposal through uncontrolled atmospheric re-entry to complete disposal as soon as practicable, and no more than five years following the end of their mission.

Currently, a legally non-binding NASA advisory recommends that satellite operators either remove their satellites from orbit immediately post-mission, or leave them in an orbit that will slowly decay and have the satellite entering Earth’s atmosphere sometime in a 25 year period.

But leaving this number of defunct satellites in orbit to fall apart over decades is no longer practical given how crowded space is getting; particularly at the hands of low-orbit satellite operators like Starlink and Amazon, which intend to launch tens of thousands of additional LEO satellites in the next few years:

Defunct satellites, discarded rocket cores, and other debris now fill the space environment creating challenges for future missions. Moreover, there are more than 4,800 satellites currently operating in orbit as of the end of last year, and the vast majority of those are commercial satellites operating at altitudes below 2,000 km—the upper limit for LEO. Many of these were launched in the past two years alone, and projections for future growth suggest that there are many more to come

Filed Under: atmosphere, fcc, leo, low orbit, satellites, space junk 

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The FCC Is Finally Taking Space Junk Seriously

Sep 19, 2022 — The five-year rule is an effort to at least partially tackle the rise in satellites, ensuring that dead satellites are not left to clutter