Industry and Space Force Oppose Cuts to Space Traffic Control Program

Background: A Growing Orbital Congestion Crisis

The Department of Commerce’s Office of Space Commerce (OSC) has overseen U.S. civil space traffic coordination since the 1980s, licensing remote sensing and Earth-observation satellites. In 2018, the Trump administration directed OSC to build the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS), a cloud-native mission to absorb the Space Force’s public spaceflight safety alerts and catalog.

White House Budget Proposal

In the FY2026 budget request, the White House proposes slashing OSC funding from $65 million to $10 million and defunding TraCSS. Instead, the proposal claims private industry can deliver collision warnings and orbital catalogs at scale. If enacted, responsibility for what parallels FAA air-traffic control would revert—at least temporarily—to the U.S. Space Force’s Space Operations Command (SpOC), which currently issues up to 1 million conjunction assessments per day.

Industry Response and Trade Group Lobbying

Less than a week after the request was publicized, seven space industry trade associations—representing over 450 companies including SpaceX, Amazon, OneWeb, Planet Labs and others—sent formal letters to Congressional leaders urging restoration of OSC’s budget. They warn that without a central civilian hub:

• Operational Risk Increases: Satellite operators could miss timely Conjunction Assessment Messages (CAMs), jeopardizing critical missions.
• Higher Costs: Disparate private services may charge premium fees for basic collision-avoidance data.
• Regulatory Fragmentation: A patchwork of commercial offerings could fragment U.S. leadership in setting International Telecommunication Union and UN COPUOS standards.

“Keeping space traffic coordination within Commerce preserves military resources for core defense missions and prevents conflation of space safety with military control,” the associations wrote.

Technical Architecture of TraCSS

TraCSS is designed as a microservices-driven, cloud-native platform hosted on Amazon Web Services. Key components include:

1. Data Ingestion API: Accepts Two-Line Element sets (TLEs) and SP3 precise ephemeris via RESTful endpoints.
2. Processing Pipeline: Uses containerized Docker workloads orchestrated by Kubernetes to compute covariance matrices and conjunction probabilities.
3. Alert Distribution System: Publishes Conjunction Data Message (CDM) formats to subscribed civil and commercial operators over MQTT and S-FTP.
4. Public Catalog: A NoSQL database (Amazon DynamoDB) backing a web portal with OGC-compliant APIs for browsing 47,000+ tracked objects.

This architecture supports near–real-time updates (>10,000 orbits/sec) and auto-scales to meet peak load surges when megaconstellations maneuver.

Risks of Militarizing Space Traffic Coordination

SpOC’s current role blends safety alerts with space domain awareness for defense. Many experts caution that retaining collision warnings under the DoD could:

• Entangle commercial operators in national security classifications.
• Hinder international data sharing with partners like ESA, JAXA, and Space-Track contributors.
• Distract Space Force resources from emerging threats: ramming, electronic warfare, and on-orbit servicing counter-measures.

Col. Raj Agrawal, former head of Mission Delta 2, emphasizes: “My focus is risk de-escalation, not running a commercial traffic service.”

International Standards and Collaboration

Orbital safety demands global coordination. The Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) and UN COPUOS guidelines recommend:

1. Timely sharing of ephemeris and maneuver plans.
2. Common data formats (SP3, TLE, CDM) for interoperability.
3. Voluntary post-mission disposal compliance to limit debris.

TraCSS’s public API aligns with these standards, enabling non-U.S. operators to integrate conjunction alerts into their Mission Planning Software. Commercial SSA firms like LeoLabs and ExoAnalytic Solutions also feed sensor data into the ecosystem, augmenting Space Force radars and telescopes.

Potential Impact on Orbital Debris Mitigation and Kessler Syndrome

NASA and ESA studies warn that an uncontrolled cascade—Kessler syndrome—could render key LEO altitudes unusable. By centralizing collision avoidance data, TraCSS helps:

• Reduce unnecessary
  collision-avoidance maneuvers that consume Δv budget.
• Prioritize active debris-removal missions for high-mass derelicts.
• Support proximity operations for manufacturing and servicing spacecraft.

Conclusion and Next Steps

Congress now faces a choice: restore OSC funding and complete TraCSS’s full production release in early 2026, or risk a temporary reversion of spaceflight safety to SpOC. A Government Accountability Office audit is also underway, examining cost effectiveness of federal versus commercial traffic services. Industry and military leaders agree: a civilian-run, cloud-native traffic control program is critical to U.S. strategic leadership and the long-term sustainability of the orbital environment.