US Government issues first-ever space debris penalty to Dish Network

> Otherwise it would be folded into the regular operating expenses.

If you read the consent decree[1] you can see that the monetary fee is not the only thing DISH agreed to.

In section 18 you can see they agreed to implement a compliance plan. Basically they improve on their fuel tracking, and end of mission planning. This makes it more likely that this thing won't happen again, and also makes it easier to argue if it still happens that it happened wilfully.

1: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-23-888A2.pdf

> other penalties, such us restricted future launches?

This. There are other compliance conditions, and failure to comply means no more launch licenses.

It establishes a level of liability and bad behaviour which means if it collides with something they'll probably have an easy time suing dish for the cost of the satellite (millions).

In general, a lot of government fees and penalties are not just about that penalty, it's about the fact that if you do it again, the next one will be much, much bigger. Read the $150K as a warning shot across the bow.

There are some places where this doesn't seem to operate very well, particularly in the financial world, but in general, this is often the idea behind these penalties. Especially for the first time a law is getting enforced; it isn't really very just to ignore a law for years/decades and then one day out of the blue slam someone with multi-million dollar judgments. There are even some Common Law doctrines that the targets could use to argue against such penalties holding up in court, though, as always, trying to counter a written law with common law general doctrines is tricky. But I'd say there's at least a good chance you could get a sudden, huge initial penalty argued way down in a lawsuit.

It’s a novel enforcement action. The point isn’t to bankrupt the American satellite industry, it’s to gently encourage better behaviour.

They also had to accept liability. So if their space junk wrecks some other sattelite they will be super on the hook for the whole cost.

Now, most probably nothing is out there waiting to get run over by a derelict Dish bird, but if there was...

So how do they get it towed the remaining part? This is a geosynchronous satellite so it's pretty far out there right?

It almost seems like we need some ion drive cleanup tugs in orbit. Mayb they could reclaim reaction mass gradually from the solar wind.

> Not enough, they should be require to fix their mistake by sending out another Satellite to either retrieve it or push it out where it was indented to be.

Seems like a plan with a bad risk/reward ratio. Right now the satellite isn't where it's supposed to be, but neither is it directly in the way of other geostationary satellites. But if you send up another satellite to deliberately interface with this one and move both up, you risk something going wrong and either getting stuck with two satellites in that position, or worse, both crashing into each other and making a huge mess. It's probably better to wait until the technology for grappling satellites in space is mature. This is presently an active area of research and development (OSAM), so a bit of patience should pay off.

> indented to be

I suppose that in orbit, space has won out over tabs. :-)

(sorry I couldn't help myself)

Asking that first point of a company right now would probably just kill the geostationary launch industry for a few years. Those kinds of mission rescue/extension vehicles are still under development. There was one such mission a few years ago, but it was a special case for reasons I can't recall right now. At the moment I think there are a handful of companies working on both adapters to be placed on the initial satellite and the MEV to go with it which would be launched in case of a problem with certain systems.

Plus, retrieving it is almost guaranteed to be unrealistic. It's out near geostationary orbit. The only options are to have an MEV move it into normal geostationary orbit or dump it into a graveyard orbit.

In an alternate reality there's an equal but opposite HN quarterback:

"Too much! I get sending a message with a small initial fine like 150k plus requiring a compliance plan, but this high amount is a step too far. Prepayment is just the epitome of regulatory capture IMO. Even for selfish reasons a satellite company will strive to keep their satellites minimally functional and safe from any systemic dangers in orbit. But I guess Uncle Sam always has to get his cut."

This debris is probably actually pretty cheap to remove by chance.

The orbit it is in is perfectly between geostationary and the disposal orbit. That means any other satellite who is travelling from one orbit to the other can stop off on-route for no fuel or time cost.

'grabbing' a satellite is fairly easy too. Even a fridge magnet would be enough to grab this satellite - since even tiny forces over many hours are enough in space.

I therefore suspect that it would be possible to complete this disposal with a satellite already on orbit - ie. not specially designed for the purpose, and using very little additional fuel - perhaps some operational satellites even have enough extra in reserve.

Exactly. Some sort of escrow to guarantee that what goes up will eventually come down. Without that satellite operators could go out of business and dissolve without cleaning up their messes, much like mining companies have historically done.

Probably when they aren't easily categorized and discretely identified with beginning and ending time periods.

It's a violation of the license they got from the US government

In at least 1 case, they also issued fines to a US company that tried to use an international launch to circumvent US rules

By the outer space treaty, ultimately it's the responsibility of the country that the company belongs to. If it was a german operator, it'd be subject to German rules.

Although of course since this is geostationary orbit, the point of putting it over a geographical area is to do business over that area down on Earth.

So, if it was a German company, but was doing business in the US, the US could use access to their market as leverage for a fine.

In that case presumably the other country would be responsible for issuing a penalty, assuming symmetry in a fair world (which is a fairly questionable assumption).

The regulatory vector for satellites in the US is the FCC. The FCC controls US airwaves so if you're providing services via satellite in the US you must have a license from the FCC.

So if you're a non-US company operating services in the US, you'll have to have a US subsidiary anyway and that subsidiary would be required to get the license. If you're a non-US company not doing business in the US then that's outside of regulatory jurisdiction.

Contrary to most of the fear mongering about space debris, kessler syndrome etc, the big Western satellite operators are generally moving in the right direction and have moved faster than regulators to try to set space debris management standards.

Incidents like this one are pretty uncommon, and as space debris goes, this is pretty benign in the sense that it's a large intact satellite and can thus be tracked fairly easily and precisely. Once the technology matures, a cleanup vehicle could even be sent to move it into graveyard orbit.

The kind of space debris that tends to be problematic is stuff that is too small to track, since then you're stuck relying either on pure luck or giving the area a wide berth to not have it hit something else.

Economics likely. Though, I'm sure the first contractor who is able to do it will make a decent amount of money.

The vast majority of new satellites are being placed into low earth orbit, which is cleaned up fairly quick by atmospheric drag. You can see this on an animated Gabbard diagram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRUaENzxH44

In higher orbits, particularly GEO (like the satellite in question), it's much more of a problem. Laser brooms might one day be used to deorbit small pieces of debris, but dead satellites beyond LEO will need to be grabbed and tugged/thrown into safer orbits.

Yes, the USSF has as part of it's "SpaceWerx" program a funding initiative called Orbital Prime, which autonomous on-orbit servicing and de-orbiting is a major focus. The summary headline is any private technologies that enable autonomous "RPO" Rendezvous Positioning Operations, will in turn enable activities such as autonomous repair and refueling (one of the main reasons orbital space vehicles reach end of mission is they run out of fuel), and in cases where refueling and repair aren't possible, autonomous "tugs" can dock and execute a deorbit burn for the decommissioned space craft. I was on one of the awarded teams for Orbital Prime last year, its very exciting technology and equally exciting to see serious amounts of funding materializing to tackle this problem.

Instead of a knee-jerk reaction to spending money on a particular solution, think about the problem.

Most things of significant mass are in stable orbits or they wouldn't be there for very long. Regional sats like the one from Dish are in GSO way away, so they don't really matter. The problem is that Dish didn't have a disposal plan for this satellite. It's mostly when operators create clouds of junk, especially fragments from unnecessary collisions that cross other orbits, that pose a threat to lives and property. It's good to require operators to have a deorbit or parking orbit plan.

The biggest threat is LEO-crossing MMOD, which is why crewed craft have hundreds of Whipple shielding configurations to choose from for a given application.

This isn't a problem in need of solving in such a deliberate, costly, and arbitrary manner. Instead, the solutions are holistic: don't create debris that poses a risk to LEO, have a decommissioning plan for GSO objects, and protect what needs protecting by defensive spacecraft design.

Edit: The Kosmos 2251/Iridium 33 collision was reckless operation by the Russians leaving space junk in LEO.

I'm probably the only person on HN confused by this comment, but I assume you mean Starlink, not Starling, which is a NASA mission involving 4 cube sats.

None of these concerns apply to Starlink. The satellites orbit low enough to quickly decay if they lose power. They deploy even lower than operational altitude so any associated junk comes down even faster, and the deployment method of just spinning and unlatching the stack, combined with SpaceX's philosophy of using repeatable systems (eg mechanical separators instead of explosive bolts) means that Starlink launches produce minimal debris and any debris produced is short lived.

The issue with the Dish satellite is that it's close to geostationary orbit, which is a limited resource and where the atmospheric drag is low enough that they are essentially up there forever.

LOL, NICE