McGill International Interdisciplinary Space Debris Congress Wrap-up

Thanks to Brian Weeden, Secure World Foundation Technical Consultan, for the bulk of this write-up.

The International Interdisciplinary Space Debris Congress held at McGill University in Montreal, Canada has concluded. This was an event primarily put together by Dr. Ram Jaku of the McGill School of Air and Space Law with funding support from the Erin Arsenault Trust. Brian Weeden and Ben Baseley-Walker of Secure World Foundation had significant input into the agenda and objectives for the event. The event, attended by between 50 and 75 legal and technical professionals, was devised as the first part of a two-phase project, with part two being hosted at the University of Cologne in May 2010. The Cologne workshop will include a smaller list of participants and focus on drafting a set of legal, policy, and technical recommendations for moving forward on the space debris mitigation issue.

First Session
The first session was chaired by Lubos Perek of the Czech Republic and represented a summary of current knowledge on space debris from both a legal and technical aspect. Fernand Alby, representing France’s Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) gave a summary of the amount of debris currently on orbit, the danger to satellites, and the re-entry issue. Rudi Jehn of the European Space Agency (ESA) followed with a talk on how we detect and observe space debris using the US Space Surveillance Network (SSN), some European sensors, and the International Scientific Optical observation Network (ISON), highlighting areas where there are tracking shortfalls. This was followed by Darius Nikanpour of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) who talked about space debris mitigation technologies, from spacecraft design to satellite on-orbit and end of life practices. Finally, Stephan Hobe of the University of Cologne Space Law program in Germany presented a legal analysis of how current space and international law applies to space debris. He focused on the issue of the legal definition of space debris, the potential illegality of debris creation and obligation to prevent and minimize debris, and the legality of removal and recycling of space debris.

Second Session
The second session was chaired by Richard Tremayne-Smith and focused on an analysis of the voluntary debris mitigation guidelines developed by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) and endorsed by the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) from both a technical and legal perspective. Niklas Hedman of the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs (OOSA) gave a talk on the IADC and UN COPOUS process and how that shaped the design of the guidelines. Stephan Hobe discussed potential legal issues in establishing national regulations for implementation. David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) finished up the session with an interesting analysis of the history of intentional and unintentional collisions and what the wartime destruction of a US spy satellite by a Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon might look like (a scenario that generated about three to five times as much debris as the ASAT/FY-1C event of January 2007).

Third Session
The third session was chaired by Jeff Foust of Futron Corporation and focused on current implantation of the IADC/UN COPOUS debris mitigation guidelines by various States. US Air Force (USAF) Major Mike Taylor of Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) talked about how the USAF was implementing them through regulations and policy, which is considered national “soft law” (as opposed to codes and statutes which are “hard law”), and a bit about the role of the Commercial and Foreign Entities (CFE) program in this regard. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was represented by Laura Montgomery, who gave a talk about the FAA role in inserting debris mitigation guidelines into licensing requirements. The primary issue here is that the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) only has jurisdiction over the launch and re-entry phases and not explicitly over the on-orbit phase. Carsten Weidemann (Germany’s IADC group) outlined the long-term impacts of both tracked and untracked debris on satellites and showed some initial cost estimates and returns for various levels of IADC debris mitigation guidelines implementation – the level 2 guidelines started to payoff in 2041.

K R S Murthi from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) provided an overview of ISRO activities and how it is implementing the debris guidelines. He mentioned that India has made a policy decision not to have any intentional breakups and that India does support discussion of a future international treaty on space debris. Jiehan Feng of China’s Wuhan University gave a legal overview of China’s regulatory situation and how they are looking to implement the guidelines. In particular, she pointed out that China is looking to harmonize its national space launch and regulations and increase the internal coordination between government departments. Michael Yakolev (ROSCOSMOS) talked about Russian implementation, the most recent example of which was a national law mandating debris mitigation which came into force in January 2009. He also talked a bit about the Russian center that does conjunction analysis and highlighted the need for transparency. Finally, Hugues Gilbert (CSA) talked about Canadian implementation, particularly the new Canadian Remote Sensing Space Systems Act.

Fourth Session
This session, chaired by Secure World Foundation (SWF) Executive Director Dr. Ray Williamson, focused on the various implementation strategies beyond those that were currently being used. The first talk was by Adigun Ade of Nigeria who provided the developing country perspective. He highlighted the need to get the developing countries involved in the process, since it is important to them from a safety (re-entering space debris) and security (their space assets) standpoint. Most significantly, he talked about the need to invest in knowledge and science in developing countries so they could contribute meaningfully to the discussion. Wade Huntley of the Canadian-based Simons Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Research followed with a talk on the differences in perspective between great powers and developing countries and how including the latter could help shift the debate on space away from nationalistic tendencies towards cooperation.

Ram Jakhu from the McGill Law School then discussed the various levels of international law, starting with voluntary guidelines at the least strict end and a multilateral treaty with verification mechanisms on the high end. Within this spectrum, he talked about how the space debris mitigation guidelines might fit well in a system like the Missile Technology Control Regime (MCTR) or even the Limited Test Ban Treaty. Intelsat’s Richard Dalbello gave the commercial perspective on the issue, talking about the need for agreement on radiofrequency issues as well as debris. He said that the decisions we make in the next 5-10 years will have huge implications for the future and strongly advocated making every satellite a sensor and some level of space traffic management.

Tommasso Sgobba (International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety) gave the non-governmental organization (NGO) perspective on the situation. He talked about other issues of space safety such as the threat to air traffic and toxic pollution. In particular, he mentioned that the Columbia disaster created a curtain of falling debris across a large part of the US that created a 1 in 1,000 collision hazard for air traffic. He felt strongly that space debris needed to be part of a larger space safety regime and that a lightweight international organization was needed to manage and oversee adoption.

Dave Finkelman from the Center for Space Standards and Innovation (CSSI) discussed ISO (International Organization for Standardization) processes and industrial standards. He emphasized that unless the guidelines were validated, verifiable, enforced and had demonstrated sufficiency they were mostly worthless. In particular, he talked about the need for international industrial consensus on this and especially a focus on safety focus in the orbit and constellation design phase. Xavier Pasco (Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique) talked about how European policy on space security is developing. Space is seen as an element of the security of the European citizen, and that space is seen as a way of doing soft power projection at a time when it is difficult to get agreement on an overall European security and defense policy. Finally, Rudi Jehn (ESA) spoke again on the re-orbit situation. In 2008, only seven of the 12 satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) that failed were re-orbited safely in accordance with the guidelines and that less than 400 of the 1,200 trackable objects near the GEO belt were active satellites.

Fifth Session
This session, chaired by Claudio Portelli (ESA) focused on complementary regimes and initiatives that could work well with the UN COPOUS debris mitigation guidelines. Technical Consultant Brian Weeden (SWF) gave a presentation on international civil space situational awareness (ICSSA). This was followed by Luca del Monte (ESA) who gave a talk on the European SSA initiative, in particular how they were making progress on a governance model and data sharing policy. Maria Buzdugan of Milbank Insurance talked about the issue from a space insurer’s perspective and how the insurance industry is starting to think differently about space debris. However, for the time being it is still a small fraction of the overall risk to satellites. She also mentioned that every satellite insurance policy has exclusion for destruction or damage due to an ASAT attack as well as damage or destruction from a collision with a piece of debris from an ASAT attack. Also, since the debris mitigation guidelines are becoming standardized, non-compliance may be seen as fault for any damage resulting from not complying. Finally, Bill Ailor (The Aerospace Corporation) talked about space traffic management and re-iterated his proposal for an international non-profit being setup to handle this.

Sixth Session
Chaired by Paul Dempsey of McGill University featured all the session chairs giving wrap-ups of their sessions along with a speech by Ciro Arevalo, Chairman of COPUOS. There was then an extended discussion with comments and input from much of the audience on where to go from here. Several big issues were highlighted:

1) The need to find a way to involve the developing world in the process in a meaningful and constructive way, and to expand implementation in a realistic way beyond the space faring States.
2) The role and development of regional mechanisms to overcome the lack of national mechanisms in non-space faring nations and the need to avoid fragmentation of multiple efforts.
3) Analysis and discussion of the right level of international law as the next step in space debris mitigation, and whether or not it should be part of a larger space safety regime. Should there be one big regime or agreement, or multiple overlapping ones at different levels?
4) The role and mechanism for involving commercial operators as partners with governments in this process.
5) Making sure the debris mitigation guidelines are validated, verifiable, enforced and have demonstrated sufficiency for solving the problem.
6) How do we future proof any space debris regime by adding in links to SSA and future STM regimes?
7) What is the research plan for active debris removal, something that everyone agrees is going to become necessary?
8) What is the role that space safety plays in the overall context of global human and environmental security? Can we continue to treat space as separate from overall security issues?