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The FCC adopts a five-year post-mission disposal rule

The United States Federal Communications Commission adopted an order shortening the expected disposal period for low-Earth-orbit satellites from twenty-five years to five. Because the Commission licenses the spectrum any satellite needs to communicate with the United States, the rule binds most commercial operators worldwide regardless of where they are incorporated — a communications regulator achieving through licence conditions what two decades of voluntary international guidelines had not.

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Recorded on The FCC five-year post-mission disposal rule

  1. Kessler and Cour-Palais publish the collision cascade argument
  2. The UN adopts voluntary space debris mitigation guidelines
  3. A Chinese anti-satellite test destroys the Fengyun-1C weather satellite
  4. Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 collide
  5. The first sixty Starlink satellites are deployed
  6. OneWeb files for bankruptcy protection
  7. A Russian anti-satellite test destroys Cosmos 1408
  8. The FCC adopts a five-year post-mission disposal rule
  9. OneWeb completes its first-generation constellation
  10. Amazon begins deploying production broadband satellites
  11. A constellation deployment milestone falls due

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