NASA Objects to New Satellite Megaconstellation, Citing Risk of “Catastrophic Collison”
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:
NASA objects to new megaconstellation, citing risk of "catastrophic collison":
NASA has formally commented (PDF) on a request by a US company to build a megaconstellation of satellites at an altitude of 720km above the Earth's surface, citing concerns about collisions. This appears to be the first time that NASA has publicly commented on such an application for market access, which is pending before the Federal Communications Commission.
[...] At issue are plans put forth by AST & Science, which intends to build a constellation of more than 240 large satellites, essentially deploying "cell towers" in space to provide 4G and possibly 5G broadband connection directly to cell phones on Earth. The company, based in Midland, Texas, calls its constellation "SpaceMobile" and has raised an estimated $120 million.
The space agency felt compelled to comment on AST's proposal for several reasons. Most notably, the proposed altitude for the SpaceMobile constellation lies near the "A-Train," a group of 10 Earth-science monitoring satellites operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey, as well as partners in France and Japan. "Historical experience with the A-Train constellation has shown that this particular region of space tends to produce a large number of conjunctions between space objects," the NASA letter states.
[...] In the big picture, Weeden said, this dustup between NASA and AST is more evidence that the US government-and other spacefaring nations around the world-need to do a better job ensuring that low Earth orbit remains as debris-free as possible. There is no governmental agency specifically charged with ensuring low Earth orbit remains safe, and the existing models are failing to fully capture the threat from new and old satellites, spent rocket second stages, and known debris. So in some sense, with all the megaconstellations flying into space today, regulators are flying blind, he said.
"We should have done a lot of this work over the last 10 years," he said. "From a government policy oversight perspective, we're behind the power curve."
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