10 thoughts on “Europeanizing American Space Policy”

  1. Obama is proposing to bind the U.S. by executive order to a European “Code of Conduct” for space activities that would stifle missile defense and open our commercial space industry to the prying eyes of competitors.

    Why would this be a problem if it’s done by executive order? That would be a unilateral step that could be easily reversed. And how much control can the US government exert over commercial operations by executive order alone? Unless there is specific legislation that already allows the President to do this (and there might be in the case of space launch) I’d think there wasn’t much he could do. And if there is such legislation, who can blame him for using it?

  2. If true, the extent that Russia views US companies as a threat is very interesting.

  3. These would require all satellites, rockets, and mating procedures to be inspected prior to launch, by “international observers.”

    I’m sure the NRO will support this about the same time anvils begin levitating.

  4. I’m stunned that I missed the news about the Iridium33/Cosmos2251 crash 2 years ago. I’m very glad Rand happened to mention it in today’s column.

    I’m more stunned by the news itself. The Air Force is supposed to be tracking everything over a fraction of a meter wide, even including the difficult “when will atmospheric drag pull this down” problem… but the reports say they failed to even predict the *chance* of a collision between a couple half-ton-or-larger satellites at a stable altitude, one of which was still operational? How does that happen?

  5. I’ve worked military space for over 20 years. There are a lot of misconceptions about the space surveillance network (SSN) and its capabilities. In general, the SSN sensors can track objects down to about 10 square centimeters RCS, which is pretty small. However, there are many, many factors that go into the accuracy of the orbital element sets produced from these observations.

    The most common type of element sets fall into the category of “general perturbations” (GP) processing. These are quick and easy to generate but the accuracy isn’t as good as “special perturbations” (SP) vectors. SP vectors are much more accurate but require a lot more processing than GP element sets. The exact accuracy figures are classified but there are many contributing factors to the degree of uncertainty in knowing the true positions of objects. For example, as a radar tracks a satellite, the RF energy transits the ionosphere twice. Depending on solar activity, the ionosphere can refract the radar signal which decreases angular accuracy. There is also a degree of range uncertainty with all radars. So, even as you’re tracking a satellite, there is a measure of positional uncertainty.

    Element sets or vectors are generated from observations from several sensors. Mathematically, the older a GP element set is, the greater the degree of uncertainty. The SSN consists of a series of radar and optical sensors at different locations around the world. Depending on the orbit, it’s quite possible for a satellite no to be in the field of view of an SSN sensor for several orbits. No one likes this fact but SSN sensors cost a lot of money and there aren’t nearly as many as we’d like.

    The Iridium constellation generates a lot of close calls every day just with itself. Throw in all of the other objects with conjuncting orbits and you get a lot of false alarms every day, year after year. The last time I was inside the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) out at Vandenberg (a couple years ago), they had a large display of predicted close calls for the shift. A high percentage of them were potential conjunctions between one of the 60+ Iridium satellites and something else (often another Iridium). No company has enough propellant to maneuver out of all of those conjunctions (and with the degree of uncertainty, the maneuver could actually make things worse, not better), so they trust to luck. In 2009, their luck ran out for one of their satellites.

    The JSpOC is still running on the old SPADOC system that used to be in Cheyenne Mountain. They’re working to replace SPADOC with a new system but that’s a slow process. The new system will use SP vectors for everything instead of just the high interest satellites so their conjunction predictions should be a lot more accurate.

  6. Why would this be a problem if it’s done by executive order?

    Executive agreements tend to be more binding than executive orders.

  7. It is impossible to comply with inspection by international observers while simultaneously complying with ITAR. Either one or the other would have to be waived – which kinda makes the whole shebang moot.

  8. More evidence that the regime has previously done the right thing in space because they didn’t care enough to get in the way. Now that they’ve found something to care about, watch out.

  9. I’m sitting here listening to Scott Pace commenting on this topic. He thinks it is a good idea, mostly because all of the alternatives are bad (including not signing it). He does say that it has to be de-Europeanized, among other things. But hr notes that it is not legally binding, and provides flexibility in the way it is implemented. It will also evolve.

    Very thoughtful presentation…

  10. Pace DOES say that we should not sign it as is, because it needs to be modified. It is not a finished document, and the EU is looking for inputs and modifications. They are not proposing anyone just sign as is.

Comments are closed.