There has been an ongoing struggle inside the industry to determine which US agency gets to be the "debris" authority when it comes to licensing. From what I understand, NORAD doesn't want be in licensing. The FCC is a poor fit and is over-reaching. Plus the international community doesn't necessarily want America being the authority on what you can and can't launch.
The real answer here, which the FCC just shoved right to the forefront, is that there should be a single international independent body to sign off on a debris analysis on all items placed in space. But then again, no country wants that because they either want the control for themselves or thrive on the gray area.
For the commercial launch industry, they don't want that either because most of them leave their spent rocket bodies up there (which are basically big rusting tanks with unspent fuel vapors). For the big old space, they don't want it either because they would be forced to admit that they have a fiscal responsibility to operate their satellites until they die and that their active-deorbit plans are bullshit.
What shocks me is that neither Spaceflight nor ISRO checked on the license. This is why you have mass dummies (big hunks of metal that approximate the satellite that can be launched in their place).
On top of that, shame on the CEO of Swarm. You could make the argument that she set trust in the industry back by years. She should pack it up. You don't get to ask for forgiveness instead of permission when you're playing in space. It belongs it everyone.
Until there is such a body, every country is responsible for the objects its citizens put into space according to the Outer Space Treaty. The interesting legal question to me is why it's on the US (where the satellites were built and from which they're being operated) over India (where the satellites were launched from).
(Which question, btw, shows the need for an international regulatory agency like you're describing.)
> You don't get to ask for forgiveness instead of permission when you're playing in space.
It's been a long-standing ethical concern that the breakaway startups succeed by asking for forgiveness (e.g. ride sharing and room letting). Who is to decide that space is any different? And when the technicality is based on radio-waves, why RF spectrums more sacred than housing laws?
The technicality isn't radio waves. It's object size. FCC rejected Swarms application because it wanted to use satellites smaller than the smallest 1U CubeSat specs. Apparently, tracking for these objects gets much hard the smaller they get, or something like that. But once its up, it's up, and the physical risk cannot be mitigated with an off-switch the way signal interference could, there are simply now 4 quarter-U sized sats too small to track as effectively as standard sats, which risk analysis had shown posed a too-high potential for harm.
I don't get the "international" part. Any country could add it's own regulator and companies wanting to serve the local market would have to abide by it. If you want to serve a global market, you'd have to satisfy them all, including FCC.
Of cause there is little incentive to to create such agencies as long as the FCC is taking care of it well.
It’s not just this.
There are a number of things in the airline space that are only tangentially related to spectrum, such as in-flight phone calls over WiFi that have at least touched on FCC. Even though it’s 90 percent about passenger annoyance as opposed to actual communications issues.
I don't think that's a good example. The FCC regulations should only be covering the communication issues and there significant issues, for example cell phones at high altitudes consume spectrum from a wide area of towers.
It's the FAA regulations that cover passenger issues.
It's pretty clear though that the FCC is basing its decision at least as much on the fact that lots of people hate the idea of calls in planes as on any technical issues. (I fully support banning voice calls by the way. It's not clear that the FCC that authority here though except in a narrow domain.)
I don't think this really raises the Kessler syndrome argument. The bigger question is: what was the FCC so worried about it crashing into and is that object classified?
There have been PocketQube launches which are smaller than these satellites which in theory got licenses.
The problem is that these are small enough that they couldn't be reliably tracked if they stopped transmitting. As for PocketQubes I only see one that's been launched as the smallest 5cm cubed version most are >=1.5u. I'm guessing the 2.5cm smallest dimension was too small combined with the proposed orbit, I bet they're more willing to accept poor tracking on objects that won't be there long.
They're not too small, as they seem to be actively tracked by AFSPC and others.
Also, there are estimated to be hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris smaller than these satellites. It's not clear that four more satellites are really going to raise the risk bar that much.
They can be tracked but the FCC was concerned about how reliably they would be tracked.
> Also, there are estimated to be hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris smaller than these satellites. It's not clear that four more satellites are really going to raise the risk bar that much.
Yeah but intentionally putting up more is still not a good idea.
The real answer here, which the FCC just shoved right to the forefront, is that there should be a single international independent body to sign off on a debris analysis on all items placed in space. But then again, no country wants that because they either want the control for themselves or thrive on the gray area.
For the commercial launch industry, they don't want that either because most of them leave their spent rocket bodies up there (which are basically big rusting tanks with unspent fuel vapors). For the big old space, they don't want it either because they would be forced to admit that they have a fiscal responsibility to operate their satellites until they die and that their active-deorbit plans are bullshit.
What shocks me is that neither Spaceflight nor ISRO checked on the license. This is why you have mass dummies (big hunks of metal that approximate the satellite that can be launched in their place).
On top of that, shame on the CEO of Swarm. You could make the argument that she set trust in the industry back by years. She should pack it up. You don't get to ask for forgiveness instead of permission when you're playing in space. It belongs it everyone.