TAMPA, Fla. — A scarcity of knowledge and collaboration continues to carry back efforts to make sure a sustainable orbital environment, satellite operator executives said June 13.
“We’re trying our greatest to advance the science and the notice in order that prudent policy decisions may very well be made by regulators and other influencers,” John Janka, Viasat’s chief officer of presidency and regulatory affairs, said through the fifth Summit for Space Sustainability in Recent York.
Limited space resources are being consumed “at an alarming rate,” he warned, “and we could go from there being virtually no problem a number of years ago to being at saturation by the tip of this decade.”
Janka didn’t name satellite broadband rival Starlink, which has greater than 4,000 satellites in its rapidly expanding low Earth orbit constellation, but said Viasat is supporting the event of “carrying capability” models to assist regulators determine what number of satellites are too many.
After recently completing its acquisition of British operator Inmarsat, U.S.-based Viasat operates 19 satellites in geostationary orbit.
Janka said improving modeling data would even be vital for assessing the efficacy of varied remediations and mitigations proposed to tackle the danger of debris-causing collisions, spectrum interference, and other orbital congestion concerns.
“So moderately than simply accept blind faith that we should always do the next to repair the issue in space, we’re in search of empirical models that allow us take a proposition, run it through the model, and see if it really works,” he said.
Models for assessing in-orbit collision risks have advanced significantly in the previous few years, in keeping with Janka, who said experts worldwide are starting to converge on best practices on this area.
Nevertheless, he called for more input from astronomers to grasp the impact of satellite light pollution on their measurements.
Even less is understood in regards to the environmental impact of record numbers of satellites burning up within the atmosphere following the tip of their operational lives.
To enhance its own sustainability credentials, Amber Ledgerwood, senior manager for social and environmental impact at SES, said the operator is working on “life cycle assessments” — methodologies for measuring the environmental impacts of a product through all stages of creation and distribution.
Ledgerwood said SES is compiling data to evaluate the impact launching a satellite has across the manufacturing and launch segments, along with the space and ground segments.
“I believe starting there and starting to assemble some data is a place to begin,” she said, “but there could definitely be more collaboration across the metrics that we use as an industry” to color a more accurate picture of the sector’s impact on the space and terrestrial environment.
Although SES, Viasat, and a growing variety of other space firms have began voluntarily reporting non-financial environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data, there’s currently no consensus within the industry on standards or the metrics they need to track.
Shareholders are increasingly asking publicly listed SES about its ESG metrics and goals, Ledgerwood added.
“Generally speaking, it’s a change journey,” she said, “and in order that they understand after we can provide them an motion plan versus an actual answer, however the expectation is that that will likely be different in the long run, and we are going to must find a way to reply their questions.”
SES relies in Luxembourg and faces more mandatory sustainability disclosures under Europe’s incoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) can be working on rules for mandating certain climate-related disclosures for publicly listed firms in america.
In terms of space sustainability, Viasat’s Janka said: “Best practices are great but everyone’s not going to honor them, so we’d like something greater than soft commitments — we’d like a bit of little bit of a stick.”
Developing orbital debris clean-up capabilities and improving space traffic management and situational awareness is vital, he added, but more is required to make sure a secure orbital environment.
