The rapid growth of the commercial satellite-launch industry has the FAA moving ahead to take over some safety oversight duties from the Department of Defense. Someone has to be responsible for overseeing collision avoidance for objects in orbit, and traditionally that has been the military’s role. But the FAA and the Pentagon appear to be ready to discuss moving that oversight to civilians, according to a Wall Street Journal report this week. The FAA already is in charge of airspace and flight approvals for space launches, which have increasingly been conducted by private enterprises such as SpaceX working with the agency and NASA to send commercial satellites into orbit. Above the Earth, the Pentagon uses data gathered from radar, satellites and other equipment, along with information from other nations, to watch the thousands of satellites and other objects, including natural debris, to aid in collision avoidance.
The FAA could use that data to do the same thing and work with other nations without the military’s direct involvement, an agency official said in the Journal report. “It will be a lot easier for the United States to have conversations about safety with the rest of the world,” said George Nield, the associate administrator for commercial space transportation. The change would take congressional approval to move that authority from the DOD to the FAA’s overhead agency, the Department of Transportation, and officials there have already indicated to Congress the FAA’s suitability for the job, according to the report, which notes that while there are about 1,400 commercial satellites in orbit, neither the FAA nor the DOD has any official authority to regulate them once they’re in space, which could become part of the discussions in Congress.
