Opening lines of communications for space safetyby Jeff Foust
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| “We should be transparent and we should come in peace,” Duffy said. “Those who have bought into that model and that idea, we’re willing to partner with.” |
But sometimes it seemed like the countries present were talking past each other rather than talking with each other. That was evident in one of the conference’s highlights, a plenary session involving heads of space agencies. That once involved all the officials appearing on the same stage together, allowing them to provide opening statements but then engage in discussions on stage. In recent years, though, that session has evolved—or perhaps devolved—into a series of one-on-one interviews on stage between the agency heads and conference hosts.
That meant that, in Sydney, both the acting administrator of NASA, Sean Duffy, and the vice administrator of the China National Space Adinistration, Bian Zhigang, shared the stage, but not at the same time. Bian took the stage about 45 minutes after Duffy left, with interviews of the heads of ESA, ISRO, and the Canadian Space Agency in between. (The conference has also done away with a press conference after the plenary where many, but not all, agency leaders participated.)
While NASA came in touting “American dominance in space,” Duffy used his interview to express the agency’s willingness to work with others, even if the language was sometimes awkward. “We should be transparent and we should come in peace,” he said. “Those who have bought into that model and that idea, we’re willing to partner with.”
“Not everyone shares that vision. Some people have a different viewpoint,” he said, not naming specific countries. “We’ve done this in the past. We’ve always come in peace. We haven’t been in the business of taking people’s land.” That last remark puzzled many attendees.
Bian, speaking through an interpreter, discussed international cooperation in forms such as sharing lunar samples from its Chang’e-5 mission with researchers in other nations as well as offering Earth science data. “China always supports the principle of openness and inclusiveness in cooperation,” he said.
Not only were agency leaders talking past one another, they were sometimes talking past the questions. This year’s IAC had the theme “Sustainable Space: Resilient Earth,” an opportunity to discuss the various dimensions of space sustainability: using space to support sustainability on Earth as well as ensuring space activities themselves are sustainable.
Asked about sustainability, though, Duffy interpreted it as funding for Earth science, for which he held some disdain. “We only have so much money,” he said, suggesting that field should be the responsibility of other agencies.
“There’s only one agency that explores. Human exploration belongs to one agency,” he said, referring to NASA. Regarding Earth science, “if we burn up our resources doing that, which other people, other agencies, can do, we don’t have the resources to continue our space exploration.” He didn’t discuss sustainability per se, either on Earth or in space.
Bian, asked about space sustainability, said China was committed to initiatives like implementing long-term space sustainability guidelines promulgated by the UN, as well as developing space traffic management capabilities and space debris removal. Asked if that meant including requirements for spacecraft to be able to deorbit at their end of their lives, he said yes.
However, he did not discuss the growing concern among some in the space community about the disposal of upper stages of Chinese rockets in orbits that ensure they will not deorbit naturally within 25 years, a longstanding international guideline. There has been an increase in such stages in the last year as China begins deployment of satellite megaconstellations, including cases where the upper stages either broke apart or otherwise shed debris.
Yet, despite the difficulties of the US and China relationship in space, including in space sustainability, there were glimmers of hope at IAC, signs that the countries are closer to being on the same page on the topic and even willing to talk with one another.
| “Just yesterday, we did a bit of a celebration because the Chinese national space agency reached out to us” about a potential conjunction, Drew said. “That’s the first time that’s ever happened.” |
The biggest sign came during another plenary session at the conference on Thursday, also devoted to sustainability. Alvin Drew, NASA’s director of space sustainability, noted that it has been difficult for the US and China to exchange data on topics like potential conjunctions between their nations’ spacecraft.
“For years, for political and legal reasons, our ability to communicate with the Chinese national space agency has been extremely crude: emails and dropboxes,” he said. “For years, if we had a conjunction, we would send a note to the Chinese that said, ‘We think we’re going to run into you. You hold still, we’ll maneuver around you.’ Often, we would not get a reply.” In one case, he said, China maneuvered despite the request by NASA not to do so, but fortunately with no adverse effects.
His comments echoed statements by US government officials for years about the difficulties in coordinating maneuvers: in late 2021, China filed a formal diplomatic message, called a note verbale, with the UN, claiming that Starlink satellites passed dangerously close to its Tiangong space station. In a response, the US government said it never heard from the Chinese about the close approaches, and had concluded that the satellites did not pass close enough to pose any risk to the station.
On the IAC panel, Drew excitedly announced a breakthrough. “Just yesterday, we did a bit of a celebration because the Chinese national space agency reached out to us and said, ‘We see a conjunction among our satellites. We recommend that you hold still and we’ll do the maneuver,’” he recalled. “That’s the first time that’s ever happened.”
Others at the conference said they saw more evidence that China was more willing to engage on space traffic coordination issues. What was less clear was if that was a policy change based on a sincere interest in support space sustainability or if China, as it deploys various satellite constellations, now had more to lose by not coordinating more with others.
During another session, officials with both American and Chinese constellations offered similar assessments about the challenges of coordinating space activities, critical not of each other but of other operators they say are potentially unsafe.
SpaceX and Amazon, rivals in the satellite broadband sector, said they worked well with each other regarding coordinating their constellations. “SpaceX and Amazon work really closely on making sure that our satellites are working well together,” said David Goldman, vice president of satellite policy at SpaceX. “You can have a lot of satellites operating if you’re communicating well and working together well.”
“We work very closely together on space safety. We share our ephemeris, our maneuver plans and, at the technical level, we’re screening our orbits,” said Josef Koller, head of space safety and sustainability for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, on the same panel.
The issue, he said, was with other satellite operators. He estimated about 1,500 operational satellites pass through Kuiper orbits, only half of which Amazon has contact information for should they need to coordinate in the event of a potential conjunction.
Even when they have that information, there can be language barriers. He recalled one case of a Korean satellite that posed a conjunction risk. “We had their contact information so we called them up, but there was a language barrier as well, because the answer that we got was, ‘No, I didn’t order anything from Amazon.’” (It was resolved, he said, when a Kuiper team member who spoke Korean talked with the operator.)
The third satellite operator representative on the panel was Peng Zhang, general manager of the solutions department at GalaxySpace, a Chinese company with its own satellite constellation plans. His comments notably mirrored those of his American counterparts. “We always know who to contact for frequency coordination, but we don’t know who to talk to about satellite operations,” he said.
While the American and Chinese companies shared similar concerns about coordinating satellite operations, they didn’t agree on how to resolve them. Peng suggested there be a “code of conduct” for satellite operators, but didn’t elaborate on what it should include or how it would be enforced.
| “We always know who to contact for frequency coordination, but we don’t know who to talk to about satellite operations,” Peng said. |
The American companies, by comparison, simply wanted better contact information for satellite operators to handle coordination. “It seems like such a simple thing to do to share your contact information or your email address so we can reach out to you about who is going to maneuver or not,” Koller said, “but that is the most critical item today that I see that we have not accomplished yet.”
Goldman suggested that could be a role for the International Telecommunication Union, the global spectrum regulator. “I think the ITU can play a pivotal role in trying to bring people together and share information in a trusted place,” he said.
The ITU is hosting its second Space Sustainability Forum this week in Geneva and the topic of coordination among operators is expected to come up. “One of the things we’re going to coordinate among the key LEO operators is trying to exchange direct points of contact,” said Jorge Ciccorossi, head of the Space Strategy and Sustainability Division of the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau, on the IAC panel.
The common ground among American and Chinese companies on the need for better communications among satellite operators, and a new Chinese willingness to discuss conjunctions with Western operators, show that perhaps there is an ability for countries to talk with each other on critical space topics, rather than talk past each other on a convention hall stage.
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