Congressionally requested report from group including UMass Amherst political scientist Jane Fountain examines future of commercial space traffic management
AMHERST, Mass. – A new Congressionally requested report released by a panel including Jane Fountain, director of the at the Amherst, recommends that the Department’s Office of Space Commerce (OSC) continue to lead collaborative federal efforts to improve the safety and sustainability of the space domain and bolster American leadership in space. The report also recommends that Congress act swiftly to enact appropriations and authorizations for OSC’s work, underscoring the urgent nature of the issue.
The report was published by a panel of the National Academy of Public Administration for the U.S. Department of Commerce on commercial space traffic management (STM). Congress requested that the Academy provide an independent review of which civilian government agency would be best suited to lead and coordinate STM and Space Situational Awareness (SSA) efforts to advance commercial and research uses of space outside of the national security sphere. The Academy panel report shows that four agency candidates were considered and that the Department of Commerce’s Office of Space Commerce was found to be the best suited to continue to lead a collaborative effort.
“The growth of commercial space traffic has led to the urgent need for a civilian agency to manage space situational awareness and space traffic management,” says , Distinguished University Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at UMass Amherst. “At the same time, increased activity in the space operating environment means that the U.S. Space Force must focus on national defense rather than commercial activities. The Office of Space Commerce at the Department of Commerce has the challenge of building an interagency collaborative approach to prevent collisions in an increasingly crowded space environment while also enabling innovation and a rapidly emerging commercial space industry.”
The report notes that as a next step, “the Panel requests that the Congress enact, without delay, appropriations and any required authorities for OSC to build this critical capability with requisite personnel, office infrastructure and authorities, as needed, to carry out the task of integrating whole of government capabilities to provide SSA and STM.”
The panel further found that basic SSA and STM data are a “public good” and require a dedicated government entity to disseminate data associated with those services that are necessary to both spaceflight safety and the bolstering of premium services developed by the private sector.
“One of the essential developments of the new Office of Space Commerce is development of a more open, networked approach to space situational awareness data management,” Fountain says. “The office will have to ensure data integrity and national security while overseeing and managing an inter-sectoral array of stakeholders. The data ‘repository’ will lie across several physical locations in an open architecture and rely on interoperability, data sharing and data integration agreements that should enable competition and innovation. Analytics will play an increasing role in SSA and STM as the number of satellites and debris in space continue to grow. These data will also be of vital interest to university and other researchers.”
Joining Fountain on the panel that released the report were: Michael Dominguez, panel chair and a former senior U.S. Department of Defense official who served as acting secretary of the Air Force and DoD executive agent for space; Martin Faga, the former assistant secretary of the Air Force for space; Patrick Kennedy, a former senior U.S. State Department official; and Sean O’Keefe, the former administrator of NASA and former secretary of the U.S. Navy.
The is an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan organization established in 1967 to assist government leaders in building more effective, accountable, and transparent organizations. Chartered by Congress to provide nonpartisan expert advice, the Academy helps the federal government address its critical management challenges through in-depth studies and analyses, advisory services and technical assistance, congressional testimony, forums, conferences and online stakeholder engagement.
The complete report, “Space Traffic Management: Assessment of the Feasibility, Expected Effectiveness, and Funding Implications of a Transfer of Space Traffic Management Functions,” is at .