House FAA bill would give agency recent space traffic management role

NEW YORK — A bill introduced within the House to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration features a provision directing the agency to get entangled in space traffic management, potentially duplicating ongoing work on the Commerce Department.

The bipartisan leadership of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee introduced the FAA reauthorization bill June 9. The committee is scheduled to mark up the bill, advancing it to the complete House, June 13.

One section, 600 pages right into a 773-page bill, is meant to deal with risks from orbital debris reentering and passing through airspace. The bill refers to such objects as “covered airborne debris,” which is defined within the laws as human-made objects once in orbit which have reentered uncontrollably and pose “a possible risk to the secure flight of civil aircraft in air commerce.”

The bill instructs the FAA to ascertain a program to trace objects “which might be potential sources of covered airborne debris” with a give attention to identifying those about to reenter and will pose a risk to aircraft in airspace. That program would coordinate with the FAA’s air traffic control system to discover airspace that should be closed for a reentry.

It could allow the FAA to ascertain its own space situational awareness (SSA) facilities and work with other federal agencies, corporations or international organizations for data on such objects.

While the main target of the bill is tracking debris to evaluate airspace risks, the bill does enable additional uses of the info the FAA collects. Specifically, it directs the FAA to supply “a basic level of knowledge, information, and services” at no charge. That features maintaining a public catalog of space objects and “emergency conjunction notifications” of such objects.

That may appear to duplicate at some level what the Commerce Department is currently developing to handle civil space traffic management responsibilities assigned to it under Space Policy Directive (SPD) 3 in June 2018. The department’s Office of Space Commerce is developing the Traffic Coordination System for Space, or TraCSS, that can use SSA data from multiple sources and supply basic services, like conjunction warnings, freed from charge.

The bill makes no mention of TraCSS or work being done by Commerce on space traffic management. The problem has not been the topic of hearings by the committee on this Congress. A committee spokesperson didn’t reply to questions June 12 about provisions within the bill.

Industry officials say they consider the intent of the supply is targeted on aviation safety, and never a broader space traffic management effort. There had been policy debates for years about whether the Commerce Department, the FAA’s Office of Industrial Space Transportation (AST) or one other agency should take over civil space traffic management responsibilities from the Defense Department.

That debate continued until SPD-3, when the White House chosen Commerce for that role, a call supported by an independent study in 2020 by the National Academy of Public Administration requested by Congress.

“It seems more like that is aimed toward ensuring the FAA/AST can fulfill its air safety mission” than reopening those debates, said Brian Weeden, director of program planning for the Secure World Foundation. Nonetheless, “it does suggest that there continues to be some uncertainty about what data or services the Office of Space Commerce goes to offer to other federal agencies to support their very own missions.”

“The proposed language within the FAA reauthorization bill ought to be very narrowly focused on aircraft safety within the presence of hazards posed by reentering space objects, provided that the role for STM has already been assigned to DoC,” said Dan Oltrogge, chief scientist for SSA company COMSPOC.

“Other than orbital and positional information concerning reentering objects that may very well be obtained from DoC, there isn’t any need for FAA to keep up a separate catalog for on-orbit resident space objects or to generate emergency conjunction notifications for orbital objects, as these responsibilities are to be managed by DoC per SPD-3,” he added.

The SSA section is probably the most substantive section within the bill related to space. Other sections of the report address minor issues regarding business space transportation statistics, spaceport reports and codifying an agreement between the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board on roles and responsibilities for business spaceflight accident investigations. The bill notably doesn’t address the “learning period” that restricts the FAA’s ability to enact safety regulations for spaceflight participants; that restriction is about to run out Oct. 1.