With low Earth orbit (LEO) becoming increasingly crowded with U.S. and foreign satellites, there is a growing need to craft operating rules to prevent collisions, a key congressman said Oct. 2.
Policymakers are discussing LEO satellites “but we’re not talking about it fast enough,” said Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Science, Space & Technology Committee’s space panel. If the matter is not treated with more urgency, “you’re going to see things start crashing into each other.”
One issue that needs to be determined is who will be LEO’s “traffic cop,” Bera said. While the Department of Defense currently has a major role in tracking space assets, “that’s not their core mission necessarily,” he said.
Bera believes a collaboration of civil and defense agencies might ultimately be needed. “DoD has to have a role because they know where our strategic assets are,” he said.
Bera, who spoke at a Washington Space Business Roundtable luncheon, urged policymakers to tread carefully in LEO to ensure the rules they create do not stifle industry innovation.
“Congress is going to have to write some of these rules,” he said. As “a small-government Democrat, I do worry a little bit about Congress writing all these rules because sometimes it becomes hard to roll things back once they become legislation.”
Bera would prefer that the United States draft the rules and then present them to the international community for consideration. If the United States does not act, “someone else might,” he said.
According to the congressman, new rules will also eventually be needed in deep space. For example, if water is found on the Moon’s poles and can be used to create fuel, questions will arise as to who owns that water.
“If you’re going to make those investments, then you want some certainty that those are going to be your assets,” he said.
Bera endorsed sending humans to both the Moon and Mars. While SpaceX founder Elon Musk said last week that he hopes to begin colonizing Mars in the 2020s, about a decade earlier than NASA (Defense Daily, Sept. 29), Bera believes SpaceX will ultimately need to collaborate with NASA to achieve its lofty goal.
“I don’t think NASA should look at this as a competition against Elon Musk,” he said. “I think it will require both public- and private-sector engagement. If SpaceX is going to Mars, there’s going to be a role that NASA has in that as well. And there’s probably a role that the international community has in that as well.”
Bera has not yet formed an opinion on the role of the National Space Council, which the Trump administration recently revived to advise the president on space policy and strategy and coordinate space policy among various government agencies. The council, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, is scheduled to hold its first meeting Oct. 5 at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va.