The FCC five-year post-mission disposal rule

Assembled from 38 blocks · 2 evidence · 30 related

1. Story
2. The rule by which the United States Federal Communications Commission shortened the expected post-mission disposal period for satellites ending their missions in low Earth orbit from twenty-five years to five, adopted on 29 September 2022 and phased into effect thereafter. Its significance is jurisdictional as much as environmental. The twenty-five-year figure it replaced came from the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee guidelines of 2002 and the United Nations guidelines that followed — instruments with no binding force, which states were free to implement or not. The FCC has binding force over anyone who wants to use radio spectrum to communicate with a satellite in United States territory, which in practice includes most commercial operators regardless of where they are incorporated. A licensing condition attached to spectrum is therefore doing work that space law proper has never managed, and the episode is a good illustration of where enforceable authority over orbital behaviour actually sits: not in a space treaty, but in a communications regulator. Not a place.
3. Knowledge
4. Low Earth orbit broadband constellations
5. Orbital debris
6. The FCC five-year post-mission disposal rule
7. Connections
8. Orbital debris
9. Low Earth orbit broadband constellations
10. The UN adopts voluntary space debris mitigation guidelines
11. The FCC adopts a five-year post-mission disposal rule
12. Low Earth orbit broadband constellations
13. Low Earth orbit broadband constellations
14. The Kessler collision cascade
15. The FCC five-year post-mission disposal rule
16. Kessler and Cour-Palais publish the collision cascade argument
17. A Chinese anti-satellite test destroys the Fengyun-1C weather satellite
18. The UN adopts voluntary space debris mitigation guidelines
19. Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 collide
20. The first sixty Starlink satellites are deployed
21. A Russian anti-satellite test destroys Cosmos 1408
22. The FCC adopts a five-year post-mission disposal rule
23. Orbital debris
24. ITU spectrum and orbital-slot regulation
25. Orbital shells as distinct economic regimes
26. Reusable orbital launch
27. Satellite communications
28. Orbital debris
29. The FCC five-year post-mission disposal rule
30. The first sixty Starlink satellites are deployed
31. OneWeb files for bankruptcy protection
32. The FCC adopts a five-year post-mission disposal rule
33. OneWeb completes its first-generation constellation
34. Amazon begins deploying production broadband satellites
35. A constellation deployment milestone falls due
36. Evidence
37. Shortens the expected post-mission disposal period for satellites ending their missions in low Earth orbit from twenty-five years to five, as a condition attached to spectrum licensing. V55 verification basis: the order text was not retrieved in this session; the docket number is deliberately omitted rather than stated from memory.
38. Establishes voluntary, non-binding debris mitigation expectations including removal of low-Earth-orbit spacecraft within twenty-five years of mission end. V55 verification basis: the guidelines were not retrieved in this session; the adoption year and the twenty-five-year expectation are stated from author knowledge.