Former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, now a board member of The Aerospace Corporation, delivered a cautionary message at SATELLITE 2022 about space debris and the need for robust regulation.
“The thing I hear that affects everybody and will continue to affect everybody basically in perpetuity — it will never end — is the issue of space debris,” he said. “We’re in a situation now where all of us in this room who are involved in space have a responsibility now more than ever to do what is right when we think about the space debris situation, especially in LEO where the regulatory environment frankly is not where it needs to be.”
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If a company launches a constellation of 15,000 satellites, about 1.5 percent will be derelict and unable to deorbit. “They become, in essence, space debris. But friends, that’s not where it ends. That’s where it starts.” Collision risk from operational satellites also goes unassessed: “Nobody knows what that collision risk is, and that’s a really big deal.”
Bridenstine called for Congress to fund an agency dedicated to space safety: “We need to make sure that what we do is right as a nation, so that we actually get an agency whose role is to make sure that space is safe for the rest of us, and it needs to be funded.” He also stressed preserving the International Space Station through 2030: “We are not going to recreate another International Space Station. We have to preserve this as an institution.”
On adversaries: “[They] are creating capabilities to make it an existential threat to our way of life. We are in fact dependent on space, and because of that, we need to preserve it.”
His closing message was optimistic: “The future is very bright. Because I know that we’re going to do the right things. We need to make sure that there’s competition, and that the regulatory regimes that are established ensure that competition is there. Ultimately, that’s how the consumer benefits. That’s how the market works.” VS
