Space & Aeronautics Subcommittee Hearing – Space Situational Awareness: Guiding the Transition to a Civil Capability (with witness statements) – Chairwoman Johnson Opening Statement “As the amount of space debris and number of satellites orbiting the Earth have exponentially increased in recent years, SSA is critically important to maintaining space safety and ensuring that we continue to reap benefits on Earth from monitoring, operating, and living in space.” – Babin […]
Keith Cowing · NASAWatch on BBC World News: Russian Anti-satellite test
Wicker Introduces Space Preservation and Conjunction Emergency Act “U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, today introduced the Space Preservation and Conjunction Emergency (SPACE) Act. The legislation would authorize the Department of Commerce (DOC) to provide space situational awareness (SSA) services to civil, commercial, and international space operators.”
U.S., China will meet this year to talk space debris, SpaceNews “In a keynote speech here Sept. 22 at the AMOS conference, Frank Rose, the assistant secretary of State for arms control, verification and compliance, said that the upcoming discussion would likely include talk of space debris. While representatives from the U.S. and China have met previously to talk about civil uses of space, the two sides met for a […]
Air Force to award ‘Space Fence’ contract to track orbital debris, Washington Post “Hundreds of thousands of pieces of man-made debris are floating around out there, the detritus of more than 50 years of spaceflight. There have been chunks of dead satellites and spent rocket boosters — even a glove that an astronaut dropped in 1965 and a spatula that escaped from a space shuttle in 2006.” Do We Need […]
Lockheed Martin Space Fence Radar Prototype Tracking Orbiting Objects “A prototype of a new radar system developed by a Lockheed Martin-led team is now tracking orbiting space objects, bringing the U.S. Air Force’s Space Fence program one step closer to revolutionizing our nation’s space situational awareness. On February 29, the Air Force granted its final approval of Lockheed Martin’s preliminary design for the system.”
Space Debris No Threat to Station, NASA “Tracking data now indicates that a piece of orbital debris being monitored by Mission Control Houston will not pass close enough to the International Space Station to warrant the Expedition 27 crew members taking safe haven within their Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft.”