Space Traffic Management Needs Enforcement Teeth, NASA Administrator Says
Space traffic management (STM) is going to require some kind of enforcement structure, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a Politico event Wednesday evening. "In space, everybody's on their own right now," he said: "Nobody can compel somebody to make…
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a maneuver" in the event of a predicted collision. He said enforcement needs to be balanced with ensuring a light regulatory touch. He said STM and space situational awareness (SSA) are major White House priorities. He said having the Commerce Department take over the dissemination of Air Force Joint Space Operations Center SSA data is a viable model for freeing JSpOC of such work. But, he said, a better route might be having Commerce license commercial and nonprofit and educational entities to do SSA and STM work and create a competitive market for such activity. Bridenstine defended NASA's space launch system under development as not competing -- yet -- with commercial launch capabilities. With rocket development in the launch industry, NASA in the future might "have to rethink" using commercial options instead, but "we're not there yet," the administrator said. "We can't give up our government capability when we don't have an alternative yet," he said. "I want" commercial operators to get to Mars before NASA does, Bridenstine said, with the accomplishment being most important. He supports the idea of a Space Force, pointing to the primacy of satellites in areas ranging from communications to commerce and the rise of anti-satellite military capabilities of "near-peer competitors" such as China. President Donald Trump pledged creation of a Space Force as a sixth military branch (see 1806180028).