On July 9, the FCC issued an order approving communications for Eärendil-1, the first satellite built by Reflect Orbital, in multiple bands for telemetry and control. The approval itself was not unusual, as the FCC issues similar approvals on a regular basis. This week, in fact, the FCC plans to vote on a proposal to create what it calls a “licensing assembly line” to speed up approvals of satellite applications.
Tyson was blunt in his assessment of Reflect Orbital’s plans during a National Academies meeting last month, calling those plans “even crazier” than broadband megaconstellations.
However, Eärendil-1 is not a typical communications or remote sensing satellite. The 142-kilogram spacecraft, expected to launch later this year into low Earth orbit, will deploy a thin-film reflector 18 meters on a side. Reflect Orbital will use the spacecraft to test how it can reflect sunlight to spots on the ground.
This spacecraft will be able to light up spots on the ground a few kilometers across for several minutes at a time, potentially as bright as the full moon. The company has plans for a constellation of as many as 50,000 satellites that could provide artificial sunlight to extend the operations of solar farms, aid agriculture and construction sites, and more.
However, many environmentalists and astronomers worry that such spacecraft would make groundbased optical astronomy virtually impossible and upset the diurnal cycles of plants and animals.
“This harm could include damage to sensitive research telescope equipment, potential flash-blinding of pilots and drivers, and—as Reflect Orbital stated in its own FCC filings—potential permanent eye damage to anyone looking through a mid-sized telescope,” the American Astronomical Society (AAS) said in a statement about the mission.
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The FCC’s decision highlights a regulatory gap for commercial spaceflight in the United States. While licensing and approval processes exist for launches and reentries, by the FAA; for remote sensing, by the Commerce Department’s Office of Space Commerce; and for communications, by the FCC, who can, or should, regulate other activities remains unclear. Yet some degree of oversight by the federal government is required to meet US obligations under the Outer Space Treaty to provide “authorization and continuing supervision” of space activities by its nationals.
This has been a longstanding concern of the commercial space industry, which worried that this gap meant there was no agency empowered to approve missions that fall outside the well-worn paths of launch, remote sensing, and communications. That has led to years of efforts to develop a “mission authorization” system to provide such approvals and, thus, regulatory certainty for those companies
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There were a lot of angry posts on the space subreddits about this mission, but few understand the separation of powers in the US space regulations, and what is currently being done about bringing it together and modernising it. Mission Authorisation and Commercial Space Certification is coming to coordinate a yes, or a no, to US commercial space activities.