A key lawmaker wants industry to handle unclassified space situational awareness (SSA) data for a pair of important Defense Department programs.

Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), said Thursday there was a strong case to be made to have companies handle the commercial data for the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) and the Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center (JICSpOC). JSpOC, an Air Force program, maintains a catalog of all artificial earth-orbiting objects, charts preset positions for orbital flight safety and predicts objects reentering earth’s atmosphere. JSpOC tracks more than 16,000 objects orbiting earth.

JICSpOC, a joint program formed by U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) and the intelligence community (IC), improves processes and procedures and ensures data fusion among DoD, IC, interagency, allied and commercial space activities. JICSpOC has embedded capabilities to provide backup to JSpOC, but is not intended as a replacement for JSpOC.

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Bridenstine said JICSpOC and JSpOC currently handle SSA duties because they are the only ones who have ever performed them. Bridenstine proposed companies like Analytical Graphics Inc. (AGI) or those involved with the Space Data Association (SDA) blend unclassified DoD data with civil data. He proposed using a pilot program to see if this would be possible.

“Commercial operators are already doing it and the U.S. government needs to take advantage of that,” Bridenstine told an audience at a Peter Huessy breakfast series event on Capitol Hill.

Bridenstine proposed such an endeavor in his fiscal year 2017 American Space Renaissance bill. Though the provision didn’t make it into the House-approved version of the FY ’17 defense authorization bill, Bridenstine’s bill required the defense secretary and USSTRATCOM chief to provide a briefing to both House and Senate authorization committees on making permanent a commercial integration cell pilot program conducted by JSpOC.

Bridenstine’s bill also had a provision requiring a DoD report that identifies SSA sensors desirable for commercial satellite operators and other non-federal government operators to integrate into the systems of operators before launch to provide SSA data and address issues associated with quality, security and reliability of the data derived from such commercial sensors. These provisions did not make it into the House-passed defense authorization bill.

AGI believes that its Commercial Space Operations Center (ComSpOC) will grow by the end of the year to track the same number of objects in space as can be found in JSpOC (Defense Daily, April 1).