FCC Starts Taking ‘Space Junk’ More Seriously, Fines Dish For Parking Satellite In A Dumb Spot
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 causepotentially 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 late last year the agency finally announced it would be taking some basic steps to tackle the space junk problem. That included a newly proposed (and rather generous) five year limit for letting older satellites just sit around in orbit:
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.
This week the FCC took its first action under the new guidelines, fining Dish Network (which has had no shortage of problems trying to shift from satellite TV to wireless) $150,000 for not cleaning up one of its older, neglected satellites:
The FCC's investigation found that the company violated the Communications Act, the FCC
rules, and the terms of the company's license by relocating its direct broadcast satellite
(DBS") service EchoStar-7 satellite at the satellite's end-of-mission to a disposal orbit well
below the elevation required by the terms of its license. At this lower altitude, it could pose
orbital debris concerns."
Dish was supposed to bring down its EchoStar-7 satellite to 186 miles (300 kilometers) above its operational geostationary orbit, using its remaining fuel to bring the satellite out of orbit on May 2022. Instead, Dish parked the satellite 75 miles (122 kilometers) above the geostationary arc instead and left it there, creating space junk" concerns.
Having the FCC wake up from its multi-decade nap here is a decidedly good thing. According to the European Space Agency(ESA), there are roughly 34,580 large debris objects currently being tracked, with thousands of more smaller chunks also posing a risk. Apparently, just leaving a bunch of garbage in space and then doing absolutely nothing about it wasn't working as a mitigation strategy; imagine that.