{"id":55602,"date":"2022-04-08T19:10:07","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T11:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/us-space-force-wants-to-harness-commercial-industry-ideas-on-debris-removal\/"},"modified":"2022-04-08T19:10:07","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T11:10:07","slug":"us-space-force-wants-to-harness-commercial-industry-ideas-on-debris-removal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/us-space-force-wants-to-harness-commercial-industry-ideas-on-debris-removal\/","title":{"rendered":"US Space Force Wants to Harness Commercial Industry Ideas on Debris Removal"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

U.S. Space Force<\/strong>\u2019s Space Systems Command (SSC) may hold an industry day to hear from commercial companies about possible technologies for space debris removal, the profit potential for such companies for that mission, and how Space Force could leverage commercial expertise.<\/p>\n

During a question and answer session with reporters at the Space Foundation\u2019s Space Symposium in Colorado Springs on Apr. 6, Brig. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the program executive officer of assured access to space at SSC, said that space debris removal \u201chas certainly been a topic of public conversation among our leadership, in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a great area where commercial is a little ahead of us in terms of the thinking about the technology, about how to go out and do this,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m very excited to try to help accelerate that thinking in commercial industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

In terms of an SSC operations and assured access to space perspective, \u201cdebris can be seen as a force support type of mission, but it\u2019s right for leveraging the SSC commercial office and trying to figure out cooperative ways with commercial industry to move forward,\u201d Purdy said.<\/p>\n

Through the Orbital Prime effort, the U.S. Space Force\u2019s innovation arm \u2013 SpaceWERX \u2013 has sought innovative ideas from industry for space debris mitigation and removal for objects as large as defunct satellites and as small as objects in the centimeter range.<\/p>\n

Space Force has said that it tracks more than 40,000 objects in space\u2013only about 5,000 of which are active satellites. Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David \u201cDT\u201d Thompson has said that there are at least 400,000 smaller objects on orbit that Space Force cannot reliably track, that pose a significant risk to U.S. satellites, and that threaten the long-term safety of space.<\/p>\n

Ideas for space debris removal include capture of the debris, its de-orbiting, elimination\/vaporization of it in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere, or moving it to graveyard orbits.<\/p>\n

\u201cIdeally, I would love to have some kind of a small dollar activity to start putting a few dollars out there to start getting debris,\u201d Purdy said on Apr. 6. \u201cIt actually has an interesting tangential relationship to launch because we have ODMSP [Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices] compliance that we have to go through on launch. There\u2019s an interesting discussion that says I\u2019d like to take that whole argument off the table, and the future launch enterprise gets into removing more debris than we put up, almost like carbon credits or something like that. That\u2019s kind of what we\u2019re thinking right now.That\u2019s very leaning forward and in its nascent stages, I would say.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. established ODMSP in 2001 to tackle the increase in orbital debris relatively near Earth.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s test last November of a direct ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) weapon\u2013a collision that generated more than 1,500 pieces of trackable debris\u2013spurred Space Force\u2019s desires for more tools, including sensors, to track the debris.<\/p>\n

Debris removal and satellite repair will likely be important Space Force missions in future years.<\/p>\n

The Nov. 15 Russian ASAT test generated roughly half the debris of a 2007 Chinese DA-ASAT test that created 3,000 pieces of orbital debris larger than 10 centimeters.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published by Defense Daily.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. Space Force\u2019s Space Systems Command (SSC) may hold an industry day to hear from commercial companies about possible technologies for space debris removal, the profit potential for such companies for that mission, and how Space Force could leverage commercial expertise. During a question and answer session with reporters at the Space Foundation\u2019s Space Symposium […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55602"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}