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Can you start by telling me about space traffic management and space awareness today? How would you rate how well the world is currently doing these things?

Space traffic control is a very new field. We are at the initial stage when the international community is discussing the development of norms and standards of conduct. The main purpose of space traffic control is collision avoidance in space. Collisions are by nature debris-generating events that make the area itself contaminated and less safe for future participants. So it’s twofold – not only is the collision damaging satellites; The collision also causes long-term damage to the environment itself. And we see it very clearly in all ratings. [2009] Collision Iridium-Space.

Space situational awareness is another matter – data provision. Countries and companies around the world determine where these objects are in orbit and share what is there. For 50 years, you really didn’t need much information other than [the location of debris so it can be avoided]… But as the orbital region gets more and more debris-laden, the question is not only “How to avoid debris?” Now it’s “How do you interact with others? [satellite] operators there? “When there are two maneuvering satellites that want to be in the same place at the same time, that is when you come to the issue of control, and not to the awareness of the space situation.

Accordingly, when there is a possible collision between two objects, what is the general process of preventing a disaster? Can you provide a short description?

I was looking for an authoritative link that covered the process from start to finish. I wish I could say, “Go to this resource and it will show you what happens from the moment they seek close proximity to the moment they decide whether to maneuver the satellite or not.” But this is a little opaque. Different operators have different internal processes that they don’t necessarily want to share.

Squadron 18 of the US Space Command constantly monitors the sky and reviews the situation every eight hours. If they find that a close proximity is possible, they will send a connection alert to the owner-operator of the satellite. The owner-operator then decides what to do with this information. And then the 18th will continue to follow what is happening. The projection of where something might be in space varies greatly depending on the object, its shape, how it reacts to the atmosphere around it … If the operator intentionally moves the object, this also changes the observation results.

You argued that while air traffic control may seem like a reasonable counterpart to space traffic control for obvious reasons, namely collision avoidance, it is not really a good model, and maritime law actually provides a better one.

The entire international airspace of the world is assigned to one state for the purpose of providing air traffic control services. For example, the United States controls 5 million square miles of domestic airspace and 24 million square miles of international airspace. They are the sole authority to provide these air traffic control services in this airspace based on ICAO. [International Civil Aviation Organization]…

There is nothing like this in space. But this is not the case on the high seas. What is on the high seas is a set of agreed rules of conduct and authority over each ship: the state under the flag of which the ship is. There is not a single organ of the high seas that says yes or no, you can work here and you cannot work here. Everyone has access to this shared resource, and the principles of freedom at sea include freedom of navigation, freedom of flight, freedom to lay cables underground, and freedom to fish. Under maritime agreements, there is freedom to do business. This is in contrast to airspace, which has historically been exclusively a transport area.

The orbital domain isn’t just for transportation [either]… It is a business area: telecommunications, remote sensing, etc.

Of course, the law of the sea is also designed to prevent collisions on the high seas. Collision rules, or transcripts, dictate what should happen if two ships [on course for] head-on collision: who has priority for maneuver, what to do if something happens in a narrow channel … These kinds of principles are stated very clearly. They apply very clearly to the problems we face in the space field. There are very clear parallels here. And if we take an aircraft model, we are really trying to insert a square pin into a round hole.

Are there any objections or disagreements about the idea of ​​using the law of the sea as a source of space law? Is the general consensus moving towards this idea?

I think so, by virtue of [of the fact] that this is really the only viable way forward, but there is always discussion. When someone or a single body decides what we can do, this is an unrealistic result, given the nature of the cosmic region. We do not deal with space traffic like air traffic, because it is not just a matter of security. This is a diplomatic issue, this is also an economic issue.

It would be easy to transfer control of space traffic to one regulatory body, such as Space Squadron 18, which provides these services free of charge. But there are countries that are suspicious of this. [idea]… And, of course, there is the problem of classified data. So you run into these complexities of trust – you know, if there was one trusted global organization, then of course we could. [But] there is not one that everyone trusts, and trust changes over time.

So the next path is to create a way to share and trust this information. For example, I am working on a project in which we talk about blockchain as a means of exchanging reliable information. By the nature of the blockchain, you can determine who entered the information and verify them as a legitimate participant, and this information cannot be changed by a third party.

Space is often described as a new kind of Wild West – lawless and unregulated, and everything goes. How can a structure be created for something like space traffic control, if there is simply no established way to set the rules to begin with?

I would say that space is not really the Wild West. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty contains an obligation on states to monitor objects that they authorize to launch from their countries. So it is not unregulated; it’s not completely free. We just didn’t agree on what it really meant for continued supervision.

The accident at Iridium Space was a wake-up call. This has triggered a lot of activity, such as the development of in-orbit service technology for the disposal of large objects that remain in space, and the development of commercial sensor networks so that we can receive better and better information about the situation in space.

Mega-constellations are the next big catalyst, I believe. We see more [potential collision] alerts between two maneuverable satellites, which is a solvable problem if we have a set of rules. This creates a lot of pressure on the system, forcing it to begin to reach these agreements. Capitalism is a pretty effective motivator. As people see more and more economic opportunities in popular orbits, balancing access to those orbits also becomes a motivator.