As mega-constellations loom, US seeks to manage space debris problem

Enlarge / Artist's impression depicting a wide variety of existing and future satellites for communication, surveying Earth resources, and mapping them, circa 1978. (credit: Space Frontiers/Getty Images)

Space is getting ever more crowded. The US Strategic Command's Space Surveillance Network tracks more than 19,000 objects in orbit around the Earth, and there are estimated to be hundreds of thousands of more objects 1cm or larger in space near the planet. Because they are traveling at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour relative to Earth, even small objects pose a significant danger.

The National Space Council thinks we could do a better job of tracking and mitigating this debris. On Monday morning, the executive secretary of the space council, Scott Pace, outlined some of the space traffic management changes in a call with a handful of space reporters. "This is a new national policy to address the challenges of a congested space environment," he said. "Unfettered access to space is a vital US interest."

President Trump is expected to sign this Space Policy Directive-3 later on Monday. The policy directs the US Department of Defense to modernize its approach to tracking space debris and to increasingly rely on commercial debris-detection services to enhance the country's "space situational awareness." The Department of Commerce will provide a basic level of space situational awareness for public and private use, based upon the DOD catalog.

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