Space industry urges US Congress not to axe system that prevents satellite collisions
The White House's 2026 budget proposal seeks $10m (R177m) for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Office of Space Commerce, an 84% cut from the office's 2025 funding that would terminate Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS), a civilian system to help prevent satellite collisions and alert operators of potential crashes.
A total of 450 companies from seven different industry groups, including Elon Musk's SpaceX and Amazon's Kuiper satellite unit, wrote in a joint letter on Tuesday to the Senate committee overseeing the NOAA that without funding TraCSS, 'US commercial and government satellite operators would face greater risks, putting critical missions in harm's way, raising the cost of doing business and potentially driving US industry to relocate overseas'.
The rise of vast satellite constellations such as SpaceX's Starlink and heightened military and commercial activities in Earth's orbit have driven up risks of collisions between the 12,000 active satellites in space and thousands more pieces of uncontrollable junk, prompting efforts to create what is essentially a civil air traffic control system for space.
Audrey Schaffer, vice-president of strategy and policy at space-tracking firm Slingshot Aerospace, said the cuts would forfeit an opportunity to shape global space traffic control as the US did decades ago for international air traffic control standards, while Europe and China develop their own satellite traffic systems.
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