
FCC Issues Warning in Wake of Swarm's Unauthorized Launch - jackfoxy
https://www.space.com/40318-fcc-issues-warning-after-unauthorized-launch.html
======
danesparza
Hold on -- is the FCC an international body? I'm struggling to understand what
Swarm did wrong here -- they launched from an INDIAN launcher after they
didn't get permission to launch in the USA.

Seriously -- what power does the FCC hope to exert at this point? We live in a
world where launchers exist in other countries ...

~~~
jonathlee
According to the Outer Space Treaty (1967), which is still current
international law and of which the USA is a signatory, the LAUNCHING STATE is
the responsible party. The FCC is overstepping its bounds here.

This is just a company doing what any good company would do, shopping around
for the best venue/set of rules for it's business. That's why companies
physically located in Illinois or California incorporate in Maryland. Since
India was willing to take responsibility for the launch, the USA (and FCC) is
just out of the picture.

~~~
greglindahl
Both India and Spaceflight Industries agree that they won't launch anything
from the US without a US license. This is a company that lied to everyone
involved.

~~~
Latteland
but we think they launched from india. other comments suggest its an Indian
decision about launching.

~~~
simonh
As the article points out, satellite operators are free to choose which
nation's regulatory regime they launch under, but they do have to pick one.

If India freely made an agreement with the US to only launch FCC approved US
satellites by US operators, that's India's choice. As it happens India didn't
actually grant them a license to launch either, they just lied about having a
US license, so technically they're probably in violation of Indian law as well
or at least in breach of contract.

------
dswiese
Is anyone surprised a startup ignored the ruling of a regulatory body and did
what they wanted anyways?

~~~
reaperducer
But... but... but... being "disruptive" is a good thing!

Move fast and break [laws]. It's the SV way.

~~~
mfoy_
"Move fast and break things" is a problematic motto if it applies equally to
your product and work culture.

~~~
chasing
And to the health and safety of those around you...

------
everdev
> Swarm applied for an FCC license, but was denied on concerns that its
> spacecraft, being "smaller than 10 cm in one of their three dimensions,"
> couldn't be reliably tracked by the Air Force's Space Surveillance Network.

And what is the concern around tracking them, inability to divert a spacecraft
or satellite that might collide with a swarm of small objects?

~~~
cbanek
Most spacecraft/satellites don't have onboard radar or other local scanning
equipment, and "diverting" a spacecraft is actually a pretty complicated
thing. This would involve multiple delta-v (using thrusters), both to avoid
the object and then go back into their normal orbit. That could eliminate
years of useful lifetime of a satellite, because those thrusters are usually
used just for stationkeeping. Also, whatever orbit they are in is usually
related to what the satellite is doing, so it might affect
performance/reception/scanning/etc.

Just like the movie Gravity, if there was an explosion in space and you had a
lot of small objects floating around in a cloud you can't detect, that could
snowball into destroying more things in orbit, making the problem even worse.
Right now there's no way I know of to clean up space junk in orbit other than
waiting for it to burn up, which could take years or tens of years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_station-
keeping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_station-keeping)

~~~
mirashii
I think you heavily overstate the difficulty and cost of diverting a
spacecraft, especially in the case of cubesats, which in general do not have
any propulsion systems to do the delta-v manuevers you state. For collision
avoidance for cubesats, realistically you just change the drag profile to
bring the spacecraft into a higher or lower orbit. While this can in some
cases have an impact on lifetime, they're not generally going to be manuevers
away from their existing orbit enough to change performance or reception
characteristics as the new orbit is always going to be an orbit that the
spacecraft would be expected to hit anyways.

Additionally, as other comments have alluded to, part of the FCC requirements
that these spacecraft have to meet is a maximum deorbit time, which is (I
believe) 25 years. For satellites as low as these ones were, that period will
be lower.

I'm all for the FCC throwing the book at this company, but just want to make
sure we don't have misconceptions as a community about what or why these
things are regulated and how they work.

~~~
cbanek
I don't think I'm overstating anything. If you don't know you're going to
possibly hit something, there's nothing you can do, and lots of small objects
make it more probable you'll hit something you can't detect.

If you want to add some way to detect that you might hit something, it'd have
to have some impressive range, as if you're in LEO going different directions
with a 90 minute orbital period for each object, you have about 45 minutes to
do something at best (when you just passed each other on one side of the
earth, and you will collide as your orbits cross on the other side), although
you can't really detect it until it's within line of sight, which brings it
down to much less, maybe like 20 minutes. Radar or other detection systems
also take a huge amount of mass and power to operate, which increases the
cost. If your orbits go the same way, you do have some more time, and maybe
multiple orbits to see that something is getting closer every pass, but then
again, you can't really rely on that.

I've never been good at orbital mechanics, but I'm not sure how increasing the
drag would allow you to get to a higher orbit (higher meaning altitude above
earth). Reducing drag just makes you slow down slower, but I don't think will
let you go to a higher orbit. The height of the orbit is related to how fast
you are going (for example, a geosync orbit is 3.07 km/s, whereas LEO is
1.3–1.8 km/s). Drag will never make you go faster. I think you would get a
more elliptical orbit, which would also add more atmospheric drag at your new
lower perigee, also decreasing the lifetime. Even a low lifetime orbit for a
cubesat could easily be 10 years, and if you lose communications with it and
lose track of where it is at, it could be a hazard.

The amount you'd have to change the orbit also depends on the confidence of
detection of the object you're trying to avoid (ie, how close you want to risk
getting to it). If you're less sure where it is, you need to get further away
from it in order to make sure you avoid it.

To sum up, you don't know when you need to do something, your ability to do
something may be limited based on the craft doing the avoiding, and you may
not have a lot of time to figure out you need to do something and then do it.

Why these things are regulated is because orbits around earth are basically a
shared resource. How it works is very complicated. I used to work in the space
industry, and I don't even pretend to be an expert.

------
gesman
I'm with FCC on this.

We don't need more garbage in space. Enough of this in the oceans.

~~~
ovrdrv3
As a naive bystander, can you please explain why it would be bad to "pollute"
space? Do things fall back into the atmosphere and burn up and sprinkle ash
back onto the earth? I thought that objects once past the gravitational pull
of the earth will just continue to drift away into the nothingness of space,
and no matter the volume, it would be an insignificant amount to cause any
harm to our planet or view of the stars.

~~~
evgen
Where do you think the "gravitational pull of the earth" ends? Hint: the moon
is inside the gravitational pull of the earth... The danger is that things in
orbit have velocity. A lot of velocity. Taking that nice F=mv^2 equation in
mind you can imagine what would happen if a piece of space junk were to hit
something we care about (or hit something we don't care about and create a lot
more little pieces of junk that are now spreading out to cause more mayhem.)
Space is big, and earth orbit is also a very big place, but there is still a
lot of junk whizzing around up there and increasing the odds that something
you forgot about will hit something you care about is counter-productive.

~~~
greenhouse_gas
Just to emphasize: There is no limit to the earth's gravitational pull. The
formula is F=G*sqrt(m1m2)/r^2.

So as r (the distance between the center of the earth and your satellite)
increases, F decreases. But it never hits zero.

Though after a while (a Sun-Earth L point, is it?), the influence of the sun
will be greater (by orders of magnitude) than the earths.

~~~
liuhenry
For most interplanetary missions, Earth's gravitational pull on spacecraft can
be modeled as a sphere of influence of about 1 million km.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_of_influence_(astrodyna...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_of_influence_\(astrodynamics\))

------
exabrial
This is incredibly reckless of the company. Objects this small present a
danger to human flight in space because we can't track them with Radar. I hope
they are fined into the ground and I hope no one is injured as a result of
their intentionally brash actions.

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mfoy_
Obligatory plug for Planetes, a great sci-fi story about space debris.

([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes))

------
chiefalchemist
Lots of great thoughts / comments. I'm stuck trying to figure out how no one
at Swarm knew (or cared?) about the size requirement. It's seems like it
should be obvious / common knowledge.

Am I missing something?

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fuscy
They can track things bigger than 10 cm and yet they somehow misplaced the
classified military satellite delivered by SpaceX.

------
GCU-Empiricist
IANAL but my TLDR is Swarm applied for US licencing to launch, got told no,
because there devices are too small for some ground based tracking systems,
but launched anyways because they already had bought space on an Indian launch
and they didn't have time to move ownership to a better regulatory body. On
the plus side it's time to look at who owns the support & development contract
for the air-forces satellite radar, probably LockMart, because they will
probably get a contract to improve to a 5cm or less resolution.

~~~
om42
Yup! Lockheed Martin was awarded the contract a few years ago:
[https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/space-
fence.ht...](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/space-fence.html)

------
apple4ever
Ban the FCC.

------
2close4comfort
What happened to allowing the industry to regulate itself?

~~~
greglindahl
The overwhelming majority of the industry is in favor of these regulations
being formal. No one wants space debris.

------
testplzignore
Regulating launches is a losing battle. If someone wants to put something into
space, they'll just go to a country without regulations. And for cases like
this where a US company does it, the company will just move elsewhere, or have
a subsidiary or contractor "own" the satellite.

I don't see how the FCC even has jurisdiction over this. I guess they have
jurisdiction over communications with satellites within the US, but not over
the satellites themselves. And practically speaking, they have no enforcement
capabilities in this realm.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Regulating launches is a losing battle. If someone wants to put something
> into space, they 'll just go to a country without regulations._

There aren't that many countries launching commercial payloads, none who will
do so in violation of ITU rules.

> _they have no enforcement capabilities in this realm_

The ITU has enforcement mechanisms. Rogue satellites are a threat to
astronauts, every country's space infrastructure and future launches.

Furthermore, Swarm is an American company breaking American law. Normal law
enforcement vectors are available.

~~~
craftyguy
> none who will do so in violation of ITU rules.

I bet North Korea doesn't give a shit about the ITU rules.

~~~
username223
Or human rights, or nuclear non-proliferation, or treaties against using
chemical weapons, or... I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Amoral
autocrats ruling medieval slave states will keep doing what they do. Should
Swarm relocate from SV to NK?

~~~
craftyguy
My point is that GP claimed no country would violate international law, when
quite frankly that's not true. Hell, even India may have by launching Swarm's
satellites without approval from Swarm's host country.

~~~
username223
I don't think India really knew what it was doing:
[http://spacenews.com/industry-worried-about-regulatory-
backl...](http://spacenews.com/industry-worried-about-regulatory-backlash-
after-unauthorized-cubesat-launch/)

They apparently took a bundle of stuff from Spaceflight Industries, including
the space junk from Swarm, and launched it without paying much attention to
what it actually was. That seems to be no worse than inattention and maybe a
bit of incompetence.

------
novalis78
Why does reading this sound like a prequel to 1984? I wonder how the first
pioneers of aircraft would have ever gotten off the ground had they lived in a
similar stringent ‘regulatory environment’

~~~
tptacek
Why would there have been any air traffic regulation? There were no aircraft
at the time. There are now.

~~~
novalis78
Check out Glenn Martin in ‘To raise heaven ans Earth’. The amount of freedom
these inventors needed and took advantage of would be much harder to achieve
today. That’s exactly the point - they were able to test, build, fly, improve
their ‘dangerous experiments’ without local, state or Federal government
stepping in.

~~~
lovich
Thinking that the government shouldn't step in so that businesses can
experiment with whatever they want is an interesting viewpoint when the
regulation your pointing out as bad is one to keep this business from hurting
others.

When the Wright brothers tested their plane they only put their own bodies at
risk. When swarm is throwing up satellites too small to track they are
threatening every other satellite and space station in orbit.

Should chemical companies be allowed to ditch their experiments into the local
river because it let's them iterate faster? If the answer to that is no, then
why should swarm be allowed to throw anything they want into a position to
damage other orbital craft?

~~~
novalis78
I get your point I truly do. But a nefarious state (fascist, communist,
dictatorial) will always use ‘safety’, ‘security’ as a concern and an argument
to block and jail.

~~~
FireBeyond
I don't think the motives are ulterior. After all, Spacelink, with 4,000+
satellites, was approved recently, too. It's all about trackability.

------
zelon88
I'm inclined to agree with those who think the FCC is overstepping it's
boundaries, although I understand the logic of those who explain why they're
not overstepping their boundaries.

To me it seems to be a question of capability. America in this situation
sounds like a skrawny lifeguard yelling at big burly surfer dudes to stay out
of the deep end. We want the authority to regulate across borders and to
maintain our margin of superiority, but do we have that ability? If we don't
have the ability to lead this industry, we shouldn't be granted the authority
to regulate it either. At least not globally from within a vacuum.

If America wants to regulate what other countries put into space, maybe we
should have enough of a presence in space to be an authority figure.

I haven't seen the U.S. government put a fair proportion of their effort into
space technology in decades, yet we still expect to be the global harbinger of
regulation. If a private company can make a 5cm X 5cm X 5cm satellite and we
can't track it maybe the responsibility should be on us to improve our
tracking abilities rather than sangbaggging everyone else to support our faux
superiority.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _We want the authority to regulate across borders_

A U.S. regulator regulating an American satellite, made in America by American
engineers working for an American company, whose orbital damages are the
liability of the American taxpayer, is being too internationally ambitious?

> _I haven 't seen the U.S. government put a fair proportion of their effort
> into space technology in decades_

We're the largest backers of the ISS, have the largest civil and military
launch industries, have the largest concentration of private launch and
satellite companies and are one of a handful of countries in the world with a
civil space agency.

Literally yesterday, a reusable American rocket (the only of its kind on the
planet) put a NASA exoplanet survey satellite into orbit [1].

[1] [https://tess.gsfc.nasa.gov](https://tess.gsfc.nasa.gov)

~~~
zelon88
> We're the largest backers of the ISS, have the largest civil and military
> launch industries, have the largest concentration of private launch and
> satellite companies and are one of a handful of countries in the world with
> a civil space agency.

And while we're #1 in overall spending we're second to Russia in terms of
percentage of GDP. Considering our military budget is more than the next 10x
countries combined and considering we pay into that budget regardless of our
GDP I'd say we're putting in minimal effort. You're also giving credit to the
US government for research, engineering, and labor that was done by private
industry. That's where this problem becomes a problem.

Our government can't keep up with private innovation. We've got a car company
who can make a car that gets 120 MPG but the DOT won't let it through the red
tape because their required emissions testing equipment isn't sensitive enough
to read it's emissions. So you deny the car and tell the company to come back
with a shittier one they can read.

So instead of letting innovation happen, we're going to stifle it because we,
ourselves, don't want to do our part to regulate it properly and in a timely
fashion.

> A U.S. regulator regulating an American satellite, made in America by
> American engineers working for an American company, whose orbital damages
> are the liability of the American taxpayer, is being too internationally
> ambitious?

So when your private sector tech outpaces your public sector's ability to
regulate it you just disallow advanced technology and keep regulating the same
way you've always done? That sounds exceedingly bureaucratic.

~~~
mikeash
Do you have a name or a link to more information for that 120MPG car? Because
that sounds like conspiracy theory nonsense....

~~~
ebbv
It is complete horse crap. It’s one of those anecdotes anti-regulation people
love to repeat because it sounds great. But it’s fabricated nonsense.

