Coalition of space companies begs Congress to fund office designed to track satellites
A coalition of 450 space companies has now submitted letters to both the House and Senate begging Congress to not kill the funding for an office in NOAA created during the first Trump administration and designed to help manage satellite traffic in orbit.
A coalition of space industry associations representing hundreds of companies is urging Congress to reject Trump Administration plans to kill the nascent Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS). Developed through NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce, TraCSS began beta testing last fall to provide data to civil and commercial satellite operators to avoid collisions. Just as the system is finally taking shape, it is targeted for elimination in the FY2026 budget request. The Senate Appropriations Committee takes up that proposal on Thursday when it marks up the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill that includes NOAA.
This new office was first conceived as a replacement for the tracking that the U.S. military has been doing since Sputnik was launched in 1957, information that it provides free to the industry. It appears Trump in his second administration has now concluded this new NOAA office is essentially redundant and therefore unnecessary.
The letters to the House [pdf] and Senate [pdf] urge Congress to reinstate the $65 million in spending for this NOAA office, but offer no suggestions on what to cut to fund this extra cost. Instead, like all such lobbying efforts, it expects Congress to simply print money to pay for the expense.
Meanwhile, it remains a valid question why this additional office is needed if the military has been doing the job quite successfully for the last three-quarters of a century. The letters argue this is a job better suited to a civil agency, but why? The military has to do it anyway for security reasons. Why waste money on a duplicate effort?
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
A coalition of 450 space companies has now submitted letters to both the House and Senate begging Congress to not kill the funding for an office in NOAA created during the first Trump administration and designed to help manage satellite traffic in orbit.
A coalition of space industry associations representing hundreds of companies is urging Congress to reject Trump Administration plans to kill the nascent Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS). Developed through NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce, TraCSS began beta testing last fall to provide data to civil and commercial satellite operators to avoid collisions. Just as the system is finally taking shape, it is targeted for elimination in the FY2026 budget request. The Senate Appropriations Committee takes up that proposal on Thursday when it marks up the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill that includes NOAA.
This new office was first conceived as a replacement for the tracking that the U.S. military has been doing since Sputnik was launched in 1957, information that it provides free to the industry. It appears Trump in his second administration has now concluded this new NOAA office is essentially redundant and therefore unnecessary.
The letters to the House [pdf] and Senate [pdf] urge Congress to reinstate the $65 million in spending for this NOAA office, but offer no suggestions on what to cut to fund this extra cost. Instead, like all such lobbying efforts, it expects Congress to simply print money to pay for the expense.
Meanwhile, it remains a valid question why this additional office is needed if the military has been doing the job quite successfully for the last three-quarters of a century. The letters argue this is a job better suited to a civil agency, but why? The military has to do it anyway for security reasons. Why waste money on a duplicate effort?
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“The letters argue this is a job better suited to a civil agency, but why? The military has to do it anyway for security reasons. Why waste money on a duplicate effort?”
Maybe because the military does not report some things. Like its own secret satellites.
“Uncorrelated targets” are another bugaboo. They only report things they can trace back to when and who launched it. How many such “targets” are there? A lot.
They used to list the radar cross-sectional area, no more starting a while back..
Also, orbital position accuracy is limited for national security purposes.
J Fincannon: In other words, the military tracking system has all the information required. It seems to me a simple matter for the White House to establish policies that allow the military’s system to be used more effectively for commercial purposes without threatening military security.
Moreover, are you suggesting the commercial system should be allowed to publish information about military classified satellites that might be useful to hostile foreign powers? This information is better controlled by the military.
Of course the military can limit the distribution of data to any extent they desire. But I am saying maybe this is why companies do not like it. It is sort of like the old GPS inaccuracy. Yes, GPS needed to be less accurate to avoid being misused by bad actors. Yes, orbits need to be less accurate to prevent the data from being misused to target satellites. But companies may feel they need this data to be accurate and complete. Will the military provide the accurate uncorrelated target data to companies? I do not know.
Also, you seem to know about the military tracking to say it is successful. What data is this based on? My gut says the hardware is old and clunky and understaffed. That we have so many uncorrelated targets is a sign that there is not enough analysts. Without transparency (which normally is the price of doing things through the military) it is hard to understand the problems or limits.
NORAD is doing a fine job.
This is just another accu-weather deal there, a private firm said that they can do things cheaper but in reality couldn’t–it is just NOAA this time.
Over at stormtrack.org is an individual who talks about how tornado warnings that should have been issued weren’t…Mike Smith at “Weather in the news.”
He has some real horror stories.
Robert asked: “The letters argue this is a job better suited to a civil agency, but why?”
Could it be that the military does not update the orbital elements (the numbers that describe a satellite’s orbit and position within that orbit) often enough for the companies to be able to accurately predict collisions? The military’s use of the orbital elements are not for collision avoidance but for information such as the general tracking of which satellite is which and when it can be expected to overfly sensitive areas.
It is difficult to predict the position of an object in an elliptical orbit, and perturbations* do not help. Perturbations can be difficult to predict, making it much more difficult to predict a satellite in even a circular orbit. Timely updates to orbital elements help to predict the future location of satellites, reducing the unknowns of perturbations.
Currently, satellites are considered collision risks when they come within a kilometers-large “keep away” zone (an oblong bubble). This may seem adequate, but the 2009 collision between Iridium 33 the dead Kosmos 2251 had not been predicted, suggesting that the method of collision avoidance needed updating for better accuracy. We do not want to risk going back to this inadequate method.
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* In another thread, yesterday, I mentioned perturbations as being able to be used for an advantage, but there are still some perturbations, such as atmospheric drag, that make orbital prediction difficult.
There is an author who advocated for cheaper spacelift (that I won’t name here) was was constantly thwarted by this worthy in calling for any LV development:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Lyles
In the 2024 United States presidential election, Lyles endorsed Kamala Harris.[10]
He is still causing trouble:
https://spacenews.com/lyles-concerned-about-sweeping-changes-to-advisory-committees/
Instead of getting some civilian firm with folks in it you don’t know from Adam’s housecat–you need to get McNamara’s morons out of the Pentagon. I’d say more but I don’t want to violate a confidence.
Yes, we had spies like Johnny Walker Red—but civilian firms are just one more step away from “negative controls” as ICBM jockeys would call it.
Rickover had to personally vet you if you had your heart set on becoming a sub-mariner aboard an atomic powered sub.
I know some regard me as a relic–but I will take steely-eyed missile men over todays kids.
I trust very few civilian firms.