Tag: space junk

An apparent rocket part falls in Kenya

10:00 am

What appears to have been a rocket stage separation ring fell in Kenya on December 30, 2024, and local officials from Kenya’s space agency are attempting to confirm and identify the source.

The pictures of the ring show a lot of details, so it should not be hard to identify what rocket it came from, assuming the owner is willing to come forward. While most will do so, China might not.

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Defunct Pentagon weather satellite breaks up

10:40 am

According to the Space Force as well as two commercial space tracking companies, a defunct military weather satellite launched in 1997 has broken up into more than fifty pieces.

The satellite, dubbed DMSP-5D2 F14, was in a sun-synchronous orbit over the poles. What makes the break-up significant is that it is not the first of this design of weather satellites to do so.

DMSP-5D2 F14 is part of a family of spacecraft that have suffered breakups in orbit. The F12 satellite broke up in October 2016, following the breakup of F13 in February 2015. In 2004, the F11 spacecraft broke up, creating 56 pieces of tracked debris. All the satellites had a battery assembly with a design flaw that made them vulnerable to explosion.

A similar spacecraft design was used for a line of civilian polar-orbiting weather satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NOAA-16 satellite broke up in November 2015, followed by NOAA-17 in March 2021.

Overall the military launched nine satellites of this design, while NOAA launched three. Of these twelve satellites six have now broken apart. We should expect a large percentage of the remaining six to also break up.

This story explains why in the last ten years a number of companies have appeared attempting to develop the technology to remove space junk. There is a desperate need in the satellite industry for this capability, and those space junk companies are aiming to make profit from this need.

Note I do not expect or want the government to take the lead in this. This issue is mostly a need of the satellite industry, of which the world’s governments are merely just one more participant. This industry should band together to set up a fund to pay for this work, with those governments joining as just one more partner.

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ExoAnalytic now identifies more than 500 pieces from Intelsat satellite breakup

9:57 am

The private commercial space tracking company ExoAnalytic has now identified more than 500 pieces from Intelsat 33e satellite breakup.

Some of the smaller debris might actually quickly disappear as these pieces are possibly bits of solid fuel that will evaporate.

Much of the press has suddenly decided this failure is all Boeing’s fault, because the satellite was built by that company a decade ago. This seems a bit unfair, since Boeing’s problems now seem far removed from its design and construction of satellites then. At the same time one must wonder. Boeing built four of these type satellites for Intelsat, and the first was lost in 2019 when either it was hit by a meteor or had “a wiring flaw, which led to an electrostatic discharge following heightened solar weather activity.”

That means two of the four satellites have been lost, though the second, 33e, didn’t break-up until twelve years of operation, almost its expected lifespan. Furthermore, the other two satellites are still working fine.

All in all, that suggests to me that though there may be a technical cause that can be traced back to the company, it is more likely we are simply seeing a random expression of the dangers of space to engineering, by anyone.

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Intelsat satellite breaks up in geosynchronous orbit

12:09 pm

An Intelsat communications satellite launched in 2016 has broken up in its high geosynchronous orbit, scattering into as many as 57 pieces of debris.

“U.S. Space Forces-Space (S4S) has confirmed the breakup of Intelsat 33E (#41748, 2016-053B) in GEO on October 19, 2024, at approximately 0430 UTC,” states an alert posted on SpaceTrack, the U.S. Department of Defense’s space-tracking platform. “Currently tracking around 20 associated pieces – analysis ongoing. S4S has observed no immediate threats and is continuing to conduct routine conjunction assessments to support the safety and sustainability of the space domain.”

Douglas Hendrix, CEO of ExoAnalytic Solutions, said the U.S.-based space-tracking company identified 57 pieces of debris Oct. 21 associated with the breakup. “We are warning operators of any spacecraft that we think are at risk of collision,” Hendrix said via email.

This satellite, which served Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia, has had thruster issues since launch, suggesting the breakup might have been caused by similar issues.

At the moment is is unclear whether the debris will threaten other satellites in geosynchronous orbit.

The break-up once again highlights the profit potential for companies capable of removing such space junk. Communications companies like Intelsat as well as others in close orbits would certainly be willing to pay someone to clean things up, for many reasons.

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Orbital tug startup D-Orbit raises another 150 million euros

8:44 am

The orbital tug company D-Orbit announced today that it was able to extend its more recent round of fund-raising by 50 million euros, and raise a total of 150 million in private investment capital instead.

Japan’s Marubeni Corp. led the Series C round. Marubeni has exclusive rights to distribute D-Orbit’s services in Japan in Southeast Asia, according to the news release.

New and existing investors participating in the round include: Avantgarde, CDP Venture Capital, Iberis Capital, Indaco Venture Partners, the European Innovation Council, Neva, Phaistos Investment Fund, Primo Ventures and Seraphim Space Investment Trust. Also joining the round was a consortium led by United Ventures that included the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund.

I call the company a “startup” in the headline, but that probably is now incorrect. It already has flown fourteen orbital tug missions, with seven more scheduled in 2025. At this point it is well established, and could extend this most recent funding round.

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A space journalist suddenly notices that the FCC has no legal authority to regulate space junk

9:34 am

An article posted yesterday at Space News was unusual in that this mainstream media space news source and its reporter suddenly recognized, more than a year late, that the FCC’s effort to impose regulations on all satellite companies requiring they build satellites a certain way to facilitate their de-orbit at the end of their lifespan, is based on no statutory authority and is thus illegal.

[A] Supreme Court ruling in June struck down a principle widely known as “Chevron deference,” which gave agencies greater latitude in interpreting ambiguities in laws they enforced. The move has raised questions over the FCC’s space sustainability jurisdiction without a federal law that explicitly authorizes it or other agencies to establish and enforce debris mitigation rules.

Still, the FCC is seen as the logical agency to handle the risk of orbital debris. If courts rule that the FCC has not been granted the authority, Congress will likely address this once it gets around to tackling the issue.

My, my! You mean a federal bureaucrat doesn’t have the right to make law out of thin air, just to facilitate what that bureaucrat thinks should be done? Who wudda thought it!

As an old-fashioned American who believes in freedom and limited government (as clearly established by our Constitution) I had recognized this legal fact immediately in January 2023, when the FCC first made its power grab. That our young modern journalists don’t understand this is both tragic and disgraceful.

What makes this even more disgraceful is that the entire article lobbies hard for the FCC, claiming with no real evidence that “the FCC is seen as the logical agency to handle the risk of orbital debris.”

What this reporter should have known and reported is that both the House and the Senate have disgreed, forcefully. In the House one bill was introduced to give the de-orbit regulatory power to the FAA, while later rejecting a second bill that would have given that power to the FCC. The Senate meanwhile introduced its own bill giving this de-orbit regulatory power to the FAA and Commerce, not the FCC.

Sadly it is probably a mistake to give any government agency too much power in this matter, but our Congress will do so regardless. That is how things are done nowadays. Americans are expected to kow-tow to Washington regulators, in everything they do. Freedom is not the default approach. Regulation is.

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The UK awards space removal contract to Astroscale/Clearspace partnership

10:49 am

The United Kingdom yesterday awarded a new $3 million contract to a partnership of the Japanese company Astroscale and the Swiss company Clearspace to further develop a mission to de-orbit two satellites in 2026.

The British subsidiaries of Japan-based Astroscale and Switzerland’s ClearSpace announced about 2.35 million British pounds ($3 million) each in funding before tax Sept. 11 to continue de-risking their robotic arm capture system and debris de-tumbling capabilities. The grants enable the ventures to continue working on their technologies until March, when the UK Space Agency is expected to decide which will conduct the demonstration mission.

Both consortiums passed preliminary design reviews for their mission earlier this year.

Both companies are positioning themselves as space junk removal operations, with Astroscale having already flown a partly successful mission to demonstrate rendezvous and capture technologies using its own proprietary magnetic capture system.

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Chinese Long March 6A upper stage breaks up into debris shortly after deploying satellites

9:37 am

Ground and satellite reconnaissance data now indicates that the upper stage of the Chinese Long March 6A rocket that on August 6 launched the 18 satellites in a proposed Chinese 14,000 satellite internet constellation broke up into numerous pieces shortly after deploying the satellites.

The detection was made by the company Slingshot Aerospace, which tracks orbital spacecraft looking for the appearance of this kind of space junk.

This is actually the second time recently that an upper stage of a Long March 6A has broken up shortly after launch. In December 2022 the same thing was detected following a November launch.

All told, this relatively new Chinese rocket has launched seven times, and has had its upper stage break up twice. Apparently, China not only doesn’t care if the lower stages of its many rockets crash on top of its own citizens, it is quite okay with littering near-earth orbital space with debris. It needs to fix the upper stage of this rocket now, so such break-ups no longer occur.

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To guarantee no capsule debris hits inhabited areas, SpaceX to move its manned splashdowns to Pacific

10:32 am

As part of the changes SpaceX is instituting to the de-orbit procedures of its Dragon capsules in order to end any chance parts of the service module will fall in inhabited areas (as has happened several times in the past few years) the company will be shifting all manned splashdowns to the Pacific Ocean.

Repeated issues with large chunks of debris from Dragon — “trunks” where the fuel and electrical supplies are held — have repeatedly crashed down in areas ranging from Australia to North Carolina. One measure to fix that will be tasking future spacecraft after Crew-9, perhaps as soon as Crew-10, to splash down on the U.S. Pacific coast, SpaceX said during a press conference today (July 26).

“What we’ll do is we’ll implement a software change to complete the deorbit burn before jettisoning the trunk, like we did with Dragon-1, and then the trunk will intentionally land […] in an unpopulated area of the ocean,” Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management, said in the livestreamed briefing. “So to make this change possible, we’ll move a Dragon recovery vessel to the Pacific sometime next year.”

Crew-9 is now scheduled to launch to ISS on August 18th on a six month mission, landing sometime in February 2025. Crew-10 would launch about that time and land sometime in August, 2025.

Side note: The announcement yesterday of August 18th for the launch of the next Dragon manned mission suggests NASA is now confident it can determine a date prior to that for returning Starliner. This reinforces the fact that the astronauts and Starliner are not “stranded” on the station, and any news source that states or even implies such a thing indicates it is a place where you are likely getting junk news, on all its stories.

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SpaceX studying changes to de-orbit procedures for Dragon service module

10:09 am

Because it appears the trunk section of the service module of SpaceX’s Dragon capsules actually survives re-entry, the company is now studying changes to its de-orbit procedures so that it can guarantee that trunk will not crash on land, as has happened now three times in the past two years.

The solution [a NASA official] said NASA and SpaceX are looking at involves changing deorbiting procedures. Currently, the trunk is released before the capsule performs its orbit burn. That means the trunk can remain in orbit for months before making an uncontrolled reentry.

Instead, [that NASA official] said engineers are examining doing the deorbit burn and then releasing the trunk. That would provide more control of where the trunk reenters, ensuring that any debris that survives reentry lands in unpopulated regions.

To make this new procedure work they need to recalculate the fuel requirements for doing the de-orbit burn. It also requires them to figure out when to detach the trunk after the burn. I expect SpaceX to successfully implement these changes before the next Dragon launch, whether manned or unmanned.

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France awards contract to French startup to launch two robotic satellite servicing missions

10:03 am

Capitalism in space: France has awarded the French startup Infinite Orbits a contract to launch two robotic satellite servicing missions, one to attach itself to a still-unnamed satellite to extend its life, and a second to test rendezvous and proximity maneuvers near a defunct and thought-to-be tumbling weather satellite.

The key tidbit however is that the contract award is part of a French government program to encourage commercial space:

The France 2030 initiative is a €54 billion investment programme that aims to transform sectors of the French economy with technological innovation.

I was unaware of this French government program. It appears it signals a shift in financial support from the European Space Agency’s commercial entity Arianespace to new competitive French companies. If so, this is a very good sign for its aerospace industry.

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Breakup of defunct Russian satellite forces astronauts on ISS to retreat to lifeboat capsules

10:04 am

Because an old and defunct Russian Earth-observation satellite broke up into about 100 pieces as it began falling back to Earth on June 26, 2024, the astronauts on ISS spent an hour or so today sheltering in the three manned capsules (Endeavour, Starliner, and Soyuz) docked to ISS just in case one of those pieces hit the station.

Nothing hit the station, and the astronauts resumed their normal activities.

One wonders it this action was done simply out of normal caution, or if NASA officials did it to show their confidence in using Starliner as a lifeboat and thus help stem some of the bad publicity the agency is getting for the repeated delays in returning Starliner and its crew back to Earth. I don’t know the exact altitude in which that satellite broke up, but such things usually happen when a satellite dips below 100 miles, well below ISS’s present orbit. If so, there was absolutely no danger at all, and the retreat to the capsules was pure show.

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Family whose home was damaged by NASA battery ejected from ISS files claim

3:29 pm

The Florida family whose home was damaged when a battery that NASA had ejected from ISS smashed through the roof of its house has now filed an $80,000 claim with the space agency.

Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, was not home when part of a battery pack from the International Space Station crashed through his home on March 8. His son Daniel, 19, was home but escaped injury. NASA has confirmed the 1.6-pound object, made of the metal alloy Inconel, was part of a battery pack jettisoned from the space station in 2021.

An attorney for the Otero family, Mica Nguyen Worthy, told Ars that she has asked NASA for “in excess of $80,000” for non-insured property damage loss, business interruption damages, emotional and mental anguish damages, and the costs for assistance from third parties. “We intentionally kept it very reasonable because we did not want it to appear to NASA that my clients are seeking a windfall,” Worthy said.

No lawsuit has been filed so far, as the family is trying to work this out with NASA amicably, and also help set a precedent for future such incidents. NASA in turn gave the family a claim form and is now reviewing the form they submitted.

The article I think is incorrect when it states that this incident “falls outside the Space Liability Convention” (which was written under the Outer Space Treaty) because the debris didn’t come from a foreign country but was launched and de-orbited by an American government agency. The Outer Space Treaty makes whoever launches anything in space liable for any damages. If NASA attempts to fight this it will be violating not only the language but the spirit of the treaty.

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SpaceX retrieves its Dragon debris that fell in Canada in February

11:08 am

SpaceX yesterday sent a crew and a U-Haul truck to five different farms in Saskatchewan, Canada, to retrieve eight pieces of debris that came from the service module trunk of a Dragon cargo capsule when the trunk was de-orbited to burn up in the atmosphere in February.

I am certain SpaceX engineers want to find out why this debris survived its fall through the atmosphere, so as to better predict what will happen on future de-orbits. If they determine that more of Dragon’s service module survives re-entry than previously predicted, it will require a rethinking on where such de-orbits are planned, making sure they always occur over the ocean.

It also appears that an academic who doesn’t know much about space engineering showed up during this retrieval to talk to the press and attack SpaceX.

Samantha Lawler, a University of Regina astronomy professor, was at the farm when SpaceX employees arrived on Tuesday. She said SpaceX needs to be transparent about how its operations are affecting the atmosphere, and how incidents like this are dealt with.

Lawler was quoted more fully (and more embarrassingly) in this other news report:

“SpaceX has over 6,000 Starlink satellites in orbit that they claim will burn up completely when they re-enter. That comes to 23 re-entries per-day when they are at full capacity. If those re-entries are all making it to the ground, dropping hundred pound pieces of garbage, that will kill lots of people,” Lawler explained.

To claim that any Starlink satellites are threat to hit the ground proves Lawler knowns nothing about space engineering and is acting merely as a anti-SpaceX “Karen” who wants to harass the company. Starlink satellites are too small to pose a threat. Moreover, SpaceX from day one has acted responsibly to de-orbit them under a controlled manner.

Nonetheless, this incident in Canada suggests that more material from larger orbiting objects can reach the ground, and requires a rethinking as to where to de-orbit them.

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Piece from SpaceX Dragon service module falls on Canadian farm

9:12 am

Though not yet confirmed a 90-pound piece of burned debris that crashed on a Canadian farm and found in late April appears to be a section from the trunk section of a SpaceX Dragon service module.

Jonathan McDowell, who tracks space launches and re-entries, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the trunk from the private Axiom Space Ax-3 mission fell over Saskatchewan on Feb. 26.

This incident, along with several others over the last few years, tells us that not everything engineers thought would burn up upon re-entry does so. A major rethinking of how objects are de-orbited could be necessary.

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A quarter century after it was lost in orbit an American military test satellite has been rediscovered

10:17 am

A target satellite launched in 1974 as part of a military test of its surveillance satellite technology has been rediscovered in orbit twenty-five years after it was last tracked.

The Infra-Red Calibration Balloon (S73-7) satellite started its journey into the great unknown after launching on April 10, 1974 through the United States Air Force’s Space Test Program. It was originally contained in what was called “The Hexagon System” in which S73-7, the smaller satellite, was deployed from the larger KH-9 Hexagon once in space. S73-7 measured 26 inches wide (66 centimeters) and began its life heading into a 500 mile (800 kilometers) circular orbit.

While in orbit, the original plan was for S73-7 to inflate and take on the role as a calibration target for remote sensing equipment. After this failed to be achieved during deployment, the satellite faded away into the abyss and joined the graveyard of unwanted space junk until it was rediscovered in April.

After it first drifted out of contact after launch in 1974 S73-7 has been been lost and rediscovered several times, first in the 1970s, then in the 1990s, and now. It appears its radar profile makes it hard to pick up, which means it will likely be lost again.

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ESA shuffles the management and structure of its ClearSpace-1 space junk removal mission

12:59 pm

The European Space Agency (ESA) this week did a major shake-up in the management and structure of its ClearSpace-1 space junk removal mission that had previously been awarded to the Swiss orbital tug startup Clearspace.

Moving forward OHB SE will take over the responsibility of leading the ClearSpace-1 consortium. The Bremen-based company will provide the satellite bus and will be in charge of system integration and launch. ClearSpace will be responsible for the close proximity and capture operations once the vehicle is in orbit.

In addition to the change in leadership, the mission’s target has also been adjusted, with ClearSpace-1 now expected to rendezvous and capture PROBA-1. The 94-kilogram ESA technology demonstrator was launched aboard an ISRO PSLV rocket in October 2001.

The original target, a payload adaptor from a 2013 Vega launch, had been hit by another piece of junk, damaging it and making it a much more difficult target to grab, using the four grapple arms of the Clearspace spacecraft. No timeline for when this revised mission will fly was announced.

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NASA: The piece of space junk that crashed through a Florida house came from ISS, and we released it

8:56 am

After completing a careful analysis of the 1.6 pound object that had crashed through two floors of a house in Florida on March 8, 2024, NASA engineers have confirmed that it came from the cargo pallet that was dumped from ISS in March 2021.

As part of the analysis, NASA completed an assessment of the object’s dimensions and features compared to the released hardware and performed a materials analysis. Based on the examination, the agency determined the debris to be a stanchion from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet. The object is made of the metal alloy Inconel, weighs 1.6 pounds, is 4 inches in height and 1.6 inches in diameter.

Though the NASA press release notes the agency will revise its computer models for determining what will burn up in the atmosphere and what will not, it says nothing about reinbursing the homeowner, Alejandro Otero, for the damage to his home. Based on the Outer Space Treaty, the U.S. is likely liable for this damage. I suspect the negotiations are on-going, and if Otero doesn’t have a lawyer yet, he should get one immediately.

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An abandoned module from one of China’s manned capsules burns up over California

9:29 am

The orbital module of China’s Shenzhou-15 manned capsule, launched with three astronauts in November 2022 and then abandoned in orbit when those astronauts returned to Earth in the spring of 2023, burned up over southern California yesterday.

The fall created a blazing fireball witnessed by people from the Sacramento area all the way down to San Diego, according to the American Meteor Society (AMS). As of Tuesday afternoon, 81 people had reported sightings of the event to the AMS.

It is unlikely, though not impossible, that any pieces hit the ground. The module is considered small enough to be destroyed during descent. Nonetheless, its uncontrolled re-entry highlights China’s general irresponsibility when it comes to space junk. For example, the Russia Soyuz capsule has a similar design, but based on history Russia has for decades routinely controlled the de-orbit of its abandoned orbital module so that it does not come down over land.

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De-orbiting debris from ISS hits a house in Florida

8:58 am

It appears that a 2-pound piece of a de-orbiting “cargo pallet” from ISS bored through the roof of a house in Florida on March 8, 2024 and broke through two floors.

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.

NASA had taken possession of the piece to determine for certain if it is from ISS. Who is liable for the damages could become a legal tangle. The depleted batteries were owned by NASA, but were brought to ISS on a Japanese HTV cargo freighter. According to the Outer Space Treaty, the nation that launches an item is liable for any damages it causes when it crashes back on Earth. The language however doesn’t really cover a case where one nation builds the item for launch, and another nation launches it.

The owner, Alejandro Otero, had to use Twitter to get a response from NASA. According to his tweet, he had called and emailed the agency and had been ignored. Only after other news sources picked up the story did NASA respond. Furthermore, when NASA jettisoned the pallet from ISS it had insisted that the discarded batteries would burn up entirely in the atmosphere, even though other experts said differently.

The Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research and development center, says a “general rule of thumb” is that 20 to 40 percent of the mass of a large object will reach the ground. The exact percentage depends on the design of the object, but these nickel-hydrogen batteries were made of metals with relatively high density. Ahead of the reentry, the European Space Agency also acknowledged some fragments from the battery pallet may survive to the ground.

What this information tells us is that NASA knew this discarded pallet posed a risk, but made believe it didn’t.

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India deorbits a defunct satellite early, in a controlled manner

9:20 am

India’s space agency ISRO yesterday successfully deorbited its defunct Cartosat-2 satellite, using the satellite’s leftover fuel to bring it down in a controlled manner, about three decades sooner than its orbit would have decayed naturally.

The satellite was launched in 2007 to provide detailed ground images of India, and completed its mission in 2019. As noted in ISRO’S press release:

ISRO opted to lower its perigee using leftover fuel to comply with international guidelines on space debris mitigation. This involved reducing collision risks and ensuring safe end-of-life disposal, following recommendations from organizations like the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN-COPOUS) and the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC).

While such actions are a good thing, that governments in India and Europe are suddenly making a big deal about it now — after almost 3/4s of a century of inaction — is not for those reasons, but to lay the political groundwork for allowing the international community, led by the UN, to impose new regulations on all space efforts, both government and private.

Be warned. They are the government, and they are here to help you.

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Pieces of a defunct ESA Earth-observation satellite will hit the Earth

10:05 am

The orbit of a defunct European Space Agency (ESA) Earth-observation satellite, ERS-2, is expected to decay later this month, with most of the satellite burning up in the atmosphere but some pieces surviving to hit the ground.

The satellite will break apart when it hits an altitude of about 50 miles (80 km), according to the FAQ [from ESA]. Most of the resulting fragments will then burn up in the atmosphere. Don’t worry too much about the ones the make it down to the surface, for they’ll contain no toxic or radioactive substances, according to ESA.

The article and the FAQ both go out of their way to minimize the risks. Both are correct. However, the risk of this debris hitting anyone, though very very very VERY small, still exists.

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Core stage of China’s Long March 5 launched on December 15th about to hit the Earth

10:41 pm

According to the Chinese government, the core stage of Long March 5 that China launched on December 15th will hit the Earth tomorrow, somewhere in the South China Sea.

China warned that remnants of a rocket would hit an area in the South China Sea on Tuesday, following the sixth deployment of its most powerful launch vehicle eleven days ago.

Rocket debris, which generally burns up in the atmosphere on re-entry, is expected to fall off the coast of China’s island province of Hainan between 11:00 a.m. (0300 GMT) and noon (0400 GMT), said the China Maritime Safety Administration.

I have not been able to find out any further information about this rocket body from sources like the Aerospace Corporation that normally track such things. However, that China is predicting a landing spot suggests they have upgraded the engines on the Long March 5’s core stage so that they can be restarted and used to control the stage’s descent over the ocean. If so, this is excellent news, as China has stated that it intends to ramp up launches of this rocket as well as its Long March 5B variation. Prevous launches produced the threat of impacts anywhere on Earth, with one launch in 2020 missing the New York metropolitan area by only a few minutes.

That China wants to bring this down so close to China suggests it also wants to salvage the material.

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Senate passes bill that gives NASA and Commerce responsibility for removing space junk

9:27 am

The Senate on October 31, 2023 passed a bill that requires NASA to develop several space junk removal projects while giving the Commerce department the responsibility of identifying what space junk needs to be removed.

The central part of the bill would direct NASA to establish an active debris removal program. Tnat includes creating “a demonstration project to make competitive awards for the research, development, and demonstration of technologies leading to the remediation of selected orbital debris.” It would also require NASA to enter into a partnership to fly a demonstration mission to remove debris.

The debris that could be removed by those demonstrations would come from a list developed by the Department of Commerce to identify debris “to improve the safety and sustainability of orbiting satellites and on-orbit activities.” The Department would also lead work on best practices for space traffic coordination. The bill directs the National Space Council to lead an update of the federal government’s Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices.

Though unstated, this bill appears to be a direct slap at the FCC’s effort under the Biden administration to claim the power to regulate space junk, despite its lack of statutory authority to do so. In fact, the Senate underlined that slap in the face by also passing a bill that demanded the FCC streamline its regulatory overreach rather than expand it.

Neither bill is law yet, and it is unclear whether the House will agree to either. The Senate has sent the space junk bill to the House previously without passage.

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Near collision of Australian satellite with Chinese military satellite

9:31 am

According to one Australian military official, a Chinese military satellite earlier this month came within a kilometer of a Australian satellite.

Analysis conducted after the event by the company LeoLabs shows both satellites were predicted to have an “miss” distance of just 100 metres 24 hours before the anticipated “conjunction”.

According to the data, the Yaogan 37 satellite manoeuvred 16 hours prior to the conjunction, increasing the miss distance to 978 metres at the closest approach.

The official’s presentation emphasized the increasing threat of collisions from the high number of satellites being launched, but this incident instead suggests to me that the problem is actually under some control by satellite operators. It continues the pattern seen repeatedly, whereby satellite operators detect a potential collision before it happens, and take preventive measures to avoid it.

The real problem has to do with defunct equipment in orbit that no one is in contact with or can control. Such objects pose are a bigger threat, because they cannot be maneuvered.

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FCC fines Dish for failing to put a geosynchronous satellite in its proper graveyard orbit

9:39 am

The FCC on October 2, 2023 announced it is fining Dish Network $150K for failing to raise the orbit of one of its dying geosynchronous satellites so that it was in a proper graveyard orbit and out of the way.

The settlement includes an admission of liability from Dish for leaving EchoStar-7 at 122 kilometers above its operational geostationary arc, less than halfway to where the satellite broadcaster had agreed. EchoStar-7 could pose orbital debris concerns at this lower altitude, the FCC warned.

The regulator said it approved a plan from Dish in 2012 to move the satellite at the end of its mission 300 kilometers above geostationary orbit, which is about 35,786 kilometers above the Earth. Dish had estimated it would need to start moving the satellite in May 2022 to ensure it had enough fuel for the trip after two decades in orbit — but just three months ahead of the planned move the company found insufficient propellant remaining.

It is routine for satellite companies to raise the orbits of their geosynchonous satellites when their lifespan is over in order to make room for future satellites. This higher orbit, long dubbed a graveyard orbit, is presently filled with many past satellites no longer in use (though the refueling and reusing of some is now taking place).

What makes this story different is the fine. The FCC has claimed it has the right to regulate the de-orbiting plans for all satellites, even though its statutory authority does not include that right. This fine is the first since the agency made that claim. That Dish settled rather than fight was likely a decision by managment to choose the lesser evil. Even though the courts would likely cancel the fine, the fight would cost as much as the fine, and there is a chance Dish would lose. As the saying goes, better to pay the two dollars than end up in jail.

As a result, this government agency has now established a precedent whereby it can regulate and even fine private companies for not doing what it dictates when it comes to decommissioning satellites, even though no law was ever passed giving it that power. And the FCC agrees.

“This is a breakthrough settlement,” FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal said in a statement, “making very clear the FCC has strong enforcement authority and capability to enforce its vitally important space debris rules.”

The unelected administrative state continues its unstoppable growth in power.

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Space junk that ESA demo mission intends to de-orbit as been struck by another piece of space junk

9:44 am

In a strange bit of irony, an abandoned payload adapter from a mission launched a decade ago that a European Space Agency (ESA) mission was planning on capturing and de-orbiting has been hit by another piece of space junk, creating additional bits debris around it.

The adapter is a conical-shaped leftover, roughly 250 pounds (113 kg) in mass, from a 2013 Vega launch that sent a small fleet of satellites into orbit. Space tracking systems found new objects nearby the adapter, which ESA learned about on Aug. 10. The objects are likely space debris from a “hypervelocity impact of a small, untracked object” that smacked into the payload adapter, the agency said. We may never know if the crashing object was natural or artificial, given it didn’t appear in tracking systems.

The ESA mission, dubbed Clearspace-1, intends to launch in 2026 and use four grappling arms to grasp the payload adapter, after which both shall be sent to burn up in the atmosphere. Its goal is to demonstrate technology for removing space junk. This event, creating extra debris pieces around the payload adaptor, puts a kink on that mission while also underlining the need for such technology.

Mission engineers now have three years to figure out what, if anything, they need to do to deal with the extra debris. The good news so far is that it appears the payload adapter remains intact, its orbit has not changed, and the surrounding debris appears small enough to pose “negligible” risk.

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Senate committee gives NASA and Commerce responsibility for removing space junk

9:10 am

The Senate Commerce committee has now okayed a bill that would require NASA to develop several space junk removal projects while giving the Commerce department the responsibility of identifying what space junk needs to be removed.

The core of the bill would direct NASA to establish an active debris removal program. That would include funding research and development activities “with the intent to close commercial capability gaps and enable potential future remediation missions for such orbital debris,” the bill states. NASA would also fund a demonstration mission for debris removal and allow it and other agencies to procure debris removal services.

The version of the ORBITS Act approved by the committee is different from the version introduced earlier this year. Among the changes is in a section that originally called on NASA to develop a prioritized list of orbital debris to remove. In the new version, that responsibility is given instead to the Commerce Department. The Commerce Department, through its Office of Space Commerce, is developing a space traffic coordination system called the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) that will take over civil space traffic management roles currently handled by the Defense Department. That involves taking in data from Defense Department and other sources and using it to provide warnings of potential close approaches to satellite operators.

Though unstated, this bill appears to be a direct slap at the FCC’s effort under the Biden administration to claim the power to regulate space junk, despite its lack of statutory authority to do so.

The bill is of course not yet law, as it still needs to be approved by both the House and Senate. However, some version that stops the FCC now seems very likely, as the House itself has already rejected a bill that would have approved the FCC power grab.

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India officials confirm Australian beach debris comes from an old PSLV rocket

9:12 am

Officials from India’s space agency ISRO have confirmed that the large metal cylinder that washed up on an Australian beach on July 16th came from an old PSLV rocket, which which one remains at present unknown.

“We have concluded the object located on a beach near Jurien Bay in Western Australia is most likely debris from an expended third-stage of a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The PSLV is a medium-lift launch vehicle operated by ISRO,” the space agency tweeted.

A day after the object surfaced on July 16, the ISRO had confirmed to HT that the object was a part of PSLV upper stage but an old one. ISRO chairman S Somanath had said, “This is a part of PSLV upper stage but an old one. It is not from a recent mission, it must be older.” PSLV’s third stage is a solid rocket motor that provides upper stages high thrust after the atmospheric phase of launch.

If this came from an upper stage, it means it survived re-entry far better than expected, and then survived floating the the ocean for a long period. Since it does not appear as yet that the agency has determined which launch the object came from, we do not know how long.

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