Despite a crowded LEO and growing debris concerns, space sustainability remains low on the agenda for governments and the UN, speakers said at SATELLITE 2022’s sustainability session on March 23.
Patrick Chatard Moulin of the EU’s European External Action Service said he has seen no UN progress on space sustainability regulation in two years, with climate change commanding far greater attention. Ruth Pritchard-Kelly of OneWeb agreed regulators move too slowly: “It is the industry that needs to be responsible. What we launch should have been responsible by design.”
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John Janka of Viasat said industry responsibility alone is insufficient: “I think that on top of that, it’s really important for regulators to start to act on these matters. They should be looking at constellations and the level of risk and evaluate that when they’re giving licenses.” He flagged lethal non-trackable debris as an under-addressed risk: “We know it can be devastating, but for reasons that escape me, at least in the U.S. licensing process, that risk isn’t added.”
Kalpak Gude of Amazon’s Project Kuiper urged caution on premature regulation: “We get a little bit concerned about governments moving too quickly to regulation,” favoring public-private partnerships and convening for standards development instead.
Richard Green of the University of Arizona raised an unexpected consequence of LEO proliferation: dense satellite constellations could block NASA’s ability to detect potentially hazardous asteroids approaching Earth. Pritchard-Kelly concluded bluntly on existing legacy debris: “No one’s going out and picking up somebody else’s dog poop. That’s not happening. But it has to happen. And governments have got to step in.” VS
