In the last blog post, we explored outer space and the environmental pollution created through human activities. This post will look beyond the cause and effects of space debris and examine the ways in which federal agencies has implemented protocols and measures to reduce and mitigate the amount of space debris polluted in the Earth’s orbit.

Firstly, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has come up with a NASA Procedural Requirements document to define the roles and requirements needed for NASA and other relevant stakeholders to take steps to preserve the near-Earth space environment (NASA, 2017). The document outlines various guiding policies that ensure the limitation of the generation of orbital debris and the increased removal of existing debris. Furthermore, other federal organisations such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have a significant role to play in reducing orbital debris as well. For example. the FCC implements restrictions on radio frequencies that may be used during space operations as the radio frequencies may cause malfunctions to the satellites (Migaud, 2020).  Additionally, the FCC also mandates that the telecommunications satellites that are operating within the geosynchronous earth orbit (a region of orbital patterns greater than 35,800 km above the earth’s surface) must exit the orbit or move into a storage orbit when the satellite’s operations are completed (migaud, 2020).

However, Migaud (2020) finds that these policies suffer from compliance issues as some of the regulations within the policies issued are not mandatory provided that the compliance of these regulations would exceed the financial capabilities of the launching parties. On another note, Garber (2017) provides an alternative solution to mitigate orbital debris, suggesting the idea of economic incentives to mitigate and remediate the debris.

Upon evaluation, NASA’s current procedural requirements regarding the mitigation of space debris is extensive and provides a detailed outline of the regulations that need to be followed to ensure minimal space pollution. Garber (2017)’s suggestion on economic incentives that follows successful economically-incentivised models such as the United State’s Emission Trading programme has a promising outlook. However, the unfortunate reality of this suggests that the economy weighs more significantly for the people as compared to the environment. Therefore, I believe that until we find a way in which humankind can operate in society and the economy while co-existing harmoniously with the environment, economic incentives may become unsustainable in the long run.

 

References

Garber, S.J. (2017) Incentives for Keeping Space Clean: Orbital Debris and Mitigation Waivers.