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"Currently, there’s no national or global authority that would force satellite operators to take action on predicted collisions." Exciting.

by mylons 6y ago

dylan604 6y ago
"Space Force’s urgent alerts sent OneWeb engineers scrambling to email SpaceX’s Starlink team to coordinate maneuvers that would put the two satellites at safer distances from one another." This is exactly how it should work though.
- Gwypaas 6y ago
  Not really. Coordination takes resources, doesn't scale and increases the risk of human error. A predefined set of rules making encounters predictable are way better. Like we have done for ships [0] and aircraft [1]. Any time you have to actively communicate with the other party you have not made your intentions clear enough. I.e. a transferring satellite gives way to an operational which gives way to a disabled. (Of course it's more involved than this, including predictable avoidance maneuvers, but that's would be the basic gist of it.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_Preventing_Collisions_at_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_... [1] https://planefinder.net/about/visual-flight-rules-vfr-of-the-air/ https://planefinder.net/about/visual-flight-rules-vfr-of-the...
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    AFAICT NASA and SpaceX already have such an agreement, and is basically that the NASA satellite will hold steady and the SpaceX one will maneuver.
- jagger27 6y ago
  These companies, NASA, the Space Force, and other space agencies need to have big scary red telephones on their desks for exactly this situation.
JoeDaDude 6y ago
I once met with Iridium [1] engineers not long after the collision of one of their satellites with a Russian weather satellite [2] in 2009. The meeting was for another purpose entirely, but since the collision was fresh news, it naturally came up in conversation. The Iridium folk told me that they would receive warnings from NORAD of imminent collisions, defined as two satellites coming with 500m. They were receiving warnings to the tune of 10 or 12 a day, so many that they basically started ignoring them. [1] https://www.iridium.com/ https://www.iridium.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision

"Currently, there’s no national or global authority that would force satellite operators to take action on predicted collisions." Exciting.

by mylons 6y ago

"Currently, there’s no national or global authority that would force satellite operators to take action on predicted collisions." Exciting.

dylan604 6y ago

"Space Force’s urgent alerts sent OneWeb engineers scrambling to email SpaceX’s Starlink team to coordinate maneuvers that would put the two satellites at safer distances from one another." This is exactly how it should work though.

Gwypaas 6y ago
Not really. Coordination takes resources, doesn't scale and increases the risk of human error. A predefined set of rules making encounters predictable are way better. Like we have done for ships [0] and aircraft [1]. Any time you have to actively communicate with the other party you have not made your intentions clear enough. I.e. a transferring satellite gives way to an operational which gives way to a disabled. (Of course it's more involved than this, including predictable avoidance maneuvers, but that's would be the basic gist of it.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_Preventing_Collisions_at_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_... [1] https://planefinder.net/about/visual-flight-rules-vfr-of-the-air/ https://planefinder.net/about/visual-flight-rules-vfr-of-the...
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  AFAICT NASA and SpaceX already have such an agreement, and is basically that the NASA satellite will hold steady and the SpaceX one will maneuver.
jagger27 6y ago
These companies, NASA, the Space Force, and other space agencies need to have big scary red telephones on their desks for exactly this situation.

JoeDaDude 6y ago

I once met with Iridium [1] engineers not long after the collision of one of their satellites with a Russian weather satellite [2] in 2009. The meeting was for another purpose entirely, but since the collision was fresh news, it naturally came up in conversation. The Iridium folk told me that they would receive warnings from NORAD of imminent collisions, defined as two satellites coming with 500m. They were receiving warnings to the tune of 10 or 12 a day, so many that they basically started ignoring them. [1] https://www.iridium.com/ https://www.iridium.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision