WASHINGTON — Because the Senate advances a bill that will direct NASA to support missions to remove orbital debris, the agency is outlining the role it can take assisting the Commerce Department on a brand new space traffic coordination system.
The Senate Commerce Committee advanced the Orbital Sustainability, or ORBITS, Act on a voice vote during an executive session July 27. A version of the bill made it through the Senate last 12 months but was not taken up by the House.
“The ORBITS Act goes to empower NASA to research, develop and display key technologies to remove the debris,” Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), lead sponsor of the bill, said in remarks on the session. “This bipartisan bill ensures that america stays the leader in responsible and sustainable uses of outer space.”
The core of the bill would direct NASA to ascertain an energetic debris removal program. That might include funding research and development activities “with the intent to shut business capability gaps and enable potential future remediation missions for such orbital debris,” the bill states. NASA would also fund an illustration mission for debris removal and permit it and other agencies to acquire debris removal services.
The version of the ORBITS Act approved by the committee is different from the version introduced earlier this 12 months. Among the many changes is in a piece that originally called on NASA to develop a prioritized list of orbital debris to remove. Within the new edition, that responsibility is given as a substitute to the Commerce Department.
The Commerce Department, through its Office of Space Commerce, is developing an area traffic coordination system called the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) that can 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 supply warnings of potential close approaches to satellite operators.
While the Office of Space Commerce (OSC) is leading TraCSS, NASA may have a job. In a July 28 video presentation to update work on TraCSS, officials from the office and from NASA explained that NASA will probably be liable for one in all three elements of TraCSS, called HORIZON, that can concentrate on research and development.
“On this role, we will probably be creating an integrated development environment to supply OSC insight and guidance on the brand new space situational awareness data sources and services that would provide higher coordination for space traffic,” said Sandra Connelly, deputy associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
She described HORIZON as a “sandbox” to advance research in space situational awareness and space traffic coordination, serving as a test environment to perform that work without affecting the operational TraCSS system. NASA will work to establish HORIZON “as quickly as possible” and likewise start working with the research community on related activities to support TraCSS by the top of the 12 months.
HORIZON may even host a version of the foremost TraCSS system to permit for testing of recent services, said Sandy Magnus, chief engineer for TraCSS at OSC. “We are able to do verification and validation in the suitable environment to be sure recent capabilities that we’re onboarding engage accurately and don’t break anything.”
TraCSS update
The opposite two elements, led by OSC, are OASIS, which is able to serve because the repository for space situational awareness data, and SKYLINE, which is able to provide the space traffic coordination application services, corresponding to conjunction warnings.
The concentrate on TraCSS currently is developing a system for what OSC calls “phase one,” which is targeted on tracking objects in orbit. Magnus said within the video that will probably be followed by phase two, to supply launch collision avoidance, or COLA, notices, and phase three, tracking reentries.
Phase one will itself be arrange in steps in a “crawl, walk, run” manner, she said, with an initial capability ready by September 2024. “What we’ve planned is a really slow change from the business industry receiving data from the DOD over to TraCSS in a way that doesn’t disturb current operations and allows everyone to get comfortable.”
The initial version that will probably be ready by September 2024, dubbed Phase 1.0, will largely replicate what the Defense Department offers now. “Our approach is to do no harm,” she said, ingesting data and producing conjunction data messages. One change will probably be that TraCSS will do screening for conjunctions every 4 hours, twice as regularly because the Defense Department does today. TraCSS may even improve incorporation of satellite position data from satellite operators, enabling more accurate predictions of conjunctions.
A Phase 1.1, Magnus said, will incorporate bug fixes. By early 2025, TraCSS will move into Phase 1.2, which is able to add data integrity monitoring. Phase 1.3, within the second quarter of 2025, will add what she called a “mission planning function” where the service would request additional tracking data for chosen conjunctions that need higher quality data. By September 2025, Phase 1.4 will shift the conjunction evaluation to a business provider and create a public interface for TraCSS.
Magnus didn’t provide a schedule for the second and third phases, but stated that the office has been in discussions with the Federal Aviation Administration about its launch COLA needs in phase two. Reentry management will probably be more complicated, with coordination needed with the Defense Department and FAA, she said.