SPACEFLIGHT Safeguarding space virtual conference

Safeguarding the final frontier

Battleground, natural resource or orbital commons? Outer space is all these things and more. TIM ROBINSON reports from the Royal Aeronautical Society’s first-ever virtual conference – ‘Safeguarding Earth’s Space Environment’ held online on 9-10 September 2020.

NASA

Space may be vast but, like any real estate, there are more desirable locations than others. For space that tends to be low-Earth orbit (LEO), which is rapidly filling up with satellites and debris and thus presenting a number of challenges to both commercial and government operators.

The virtual conference, organised by the RAeS Space Group, drew top-level speakers from around the globe, from ESA, the UN’s Outer Space Office, the Royal Air Force, Japan’s JAXA, UK Space Agency, academia, space law, space start-ups, tracking companies, Lockheed Martin and the brand-new US Space Force to discuss and address these issues.

It is getting crowded up there

The conference heard that the rapid growth of mega-constellations is increasing the number of objects in orbit exponentially. Only in the past 12 months, SpaceX’s Starlink constellation has now reached a total of 700 satellites in orbit – and plans to expand that to 12,000 – with proposals for a follow-on system of 30,000. Other mega-constellations are also on the drawing board, such as OneWeb (48,000), Kuiper (3,200) and potentially a Chinese LEO (12,000) network. In comparison, since the dawn of the space age in 1957, humans have only put 10,000 objects in space.

PROXIMITY OPERATIONS MIGHT BE SEEN AS THE ORBITAL EQUIVALENT OF HAVING A NUCLEAR BOMBER FROM AN UNFRIENDLY STATE FLY ABOVE A VITAL POWER PLANT, SERVER FARM OR TV STATION JUST WAITING TO STRIKE.

This is now having implications for other operators. Only recently, Peter Beck, founder of Rocket Lab launch company, warned in an interview to CNN that the number of satellites is now making launches increasingly difficult: “This has a massive impact on the launch side, Rockets “have to try and weave their way up in between these [satellite] constellations.”

To avoid ‘conjunctions’ or collisions in orbit you need early warning and enough fuel in your satellite to move trajectories. But the growing number of satellites in orbit means that there has been a significant shift from even 15 years ago, said Dr Holger Krag, ESA, where the vast majority of avoiding actions were taken against space debris, to today, where 15-20% now involved conjunctions with other controlled satellites. This means that operators need to contact other operators to deconflict – taking time and resources. Krag also noted that, despite the space object catalogues and ability for observers on the ground to track many objects in orbit, this was not yet precise enough. A lot of avoiding actions are therefore probably unnecessary and are thus wasting valuable fuel, decreasing the lifespan of satellites.

There is thus a growing requirement for a Space Traffic Management system where a functional equivalent of an airliner’s TCAS collision avoidance system could automatically issue traffic awareness warnings, collision alerts and pass on information about what manoeuvres the other operator is taking to increase separation.

Space as a battleground

The increase in commercial satellites is only one half of the challenge. The other is that space is becoming increasingly a military battleground. This, of course, is not new, as spy satellites were a part of the Cold War from almost the start – but today peer rivals are becoming increasingly bold in challenging the ‘unwritten norms’ of responsible behaviour and good practice – with China’s ASAT test in 2007 a wake-up call in the vast amount of space debris it produced.

This year saw a Russian satellite attempt ‘proximity operations’ – with Western satellites (see p 14). As Air Marshal Harvey Smyth, Director Space, UK noted at the conference: “You wouldn’t tolerate this sort of behaviour in any other domain”. While Russian aircraft, ships and submarines are known to probe NATO defences to test reaction times and awareness, there is no ‘orbital QRA’ that can scramble and gently shepherd rogue satellites away from friendly objects. The speed of satellites in orbit and conjunctions means that these can be threatening ‘Sword of Damocles’, your critical infrastructure with few options to defend against them. Proximity operations, then might be seen as the orbital equivalent of having a nuclear bomber from an unfriendly state orbit above a vital power plant, server farm or TV station, just waiting to strike.

Regulations and laws

Responsible use of space also extends to countries as well as private operators. The conference also heard that international regulations and treaties (most notably the UN’s Outer Space Treaty of 1967), crafted at the height of the Cold War, where there were only two superpowers and the threat of nuclear war extending into orbit was the primary concern, are now becoming increasingly outdated in this multipolar world of commercial operators, new spacefaring states and the dependency of modern life on space-based information. ‘Space debris’, for example, is not mentioned explicitly, although it could be covered by ‘harmful contamination’.

These then need updating badly and this summer the UK diplomats had proposed a new resolution at the UN to govern the responsible use of space. Although the UK is still very much a minor space power, it is now seeking to play a larger role in establishing international agreements on the new norms of behaviour in space. The UK was the first international partner to join the US-led Operation Olympic Defender – an effort to build closer co-operation between allied nations in securing and protecting space.

The new virtual platform

This conference was notable in that it was also the first fully virtual event put on by the Royal Aeronautical Society – as it adapts to the Covid-19 environment. While, as to be expected for the first attempt, the event experienced a couple of minor technical teething troubles, this digital platform highlighted the incredible potential for future RAeS online events. Delegates could ask questions to speakers and panels but there was also a side-bar where general chat was encouraged. The digital platform also allowed for sponsor ‘virtual’ lounges, packed full of information and videos from the sponsors, as well as human representatives to connect with. Most importantly, the conference platform also provided for that vital aspect that is missing elsewhere – networking. Those that added details (company/organisation, location) to their delegate profile could request one-to-one personal meetings via an inbuilt schedule organiser. Once the conference was over, attendees could also access the entire day’s presentations via their own personal dashboard – allowing delegates to build up their own back catalogue of easy-to-access conference presentations and proceedings in one place (aerosociety-events.com) to revisit and watch at their leisure.

Summary

This conference then comes at an extremely topical time as space becomes more ‘cluttered, complex and contested’ while society becomes more dependent on space-based services. The formation of the US Space Force and the growing interest of other nations’ militaries to protect this valuable shared resource above our heads that enables much of modern civilisation is thus no accident. Yet, commercial, scientific, governmental and military operators will all need to work together if humans are to continue to reap the benefits of our space-based services. Pollution or rogue behaviour on terra firma may be bad but, in orbit, the actions of a very few (or maybe even the one) have the potential to cascade further and affect billions on Earth.

It is thus also highly appropriate that this conference on the ‘final frontier’ would also break new ground in becoming the first-ever RAeS virtual conference – bringing together speakers and delegates from almost every time-zone from Japan to the US to consider this complex and fast-moving topic.