At the Strauss Center’s “Operational Assurance for All” 12th Annual Space Traffic Conference, Aarti Holla-Maini, head of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, highlighted growing difficulties in contacting satellite operators to coordinate maneuvers and prevent collisions as orbital traffic increases. The conference was recently highlighted in SpaceNews. Holla-Maini revealed that her office intervened twice in the past year to avert potential incidents—once involving U.S. and Chinese satellites and another between a Malaysian satellite and one from North Korea—underscoring the lack of reliable communication channels among some operators.
“All this speaks to the need for a global coordination mechanism that is born of a trusted, member state-driven process,” Holla-Maini said.
The Strauss Center for International Security and Law is proud to announce the permanent establishment of the Aerospace Policy Solutions, LLC Award in Space Policy, a new endowed scholarship made possible through the generous support of Aerospace Policy Solutions, LLC. The award will provide an annual $2,000 scholarship to an outstanding The University of Texas at Austin student pursuing space policy. The Aerospace Policy...
The University of Texas at Austin has received a $9.3 million seed grant from the Texas Space Commission to establish the Space Domain Awareness (SDA) Tools, Applications, and Processing (TAP) Lab, becoming the first academic institution to work directly with the United States Space Force to detect, analyze, and counter space-based threats in near real time. Space Security, Safety, & Sustainability...
Space Security, Safety, & Sustainability Program Lead Moriba Jah was recently interviewed for an article published in NDTV on the growing problem of space debris in the context of the Chinese Shenzhou-20 Incident. On November 25, China’s Shenzhou-20 noticed damage and cracking to the spacecraft’s window due to excess space debris in orbit. “Until countries and companies consider data accuracy...