- On January 12, 2018,
an Indian rocket took off en route to space,
carrying a cluster of 31 satellites into orbit.
It was a successful mission.
Every probe deployed where it needed to be.
The only problem, four of those satellites
didn't have permission to fly;
the company that made them, went rogue.
And it's unclear how the US Government
is going to handle the situation.
More and more aerospace companies
are launching satellites into space,
and the hardware they're sending up,
is only getting smaller.
It really got started with the invention of the cute sat;
a standardized box satellite that manufacturers
can stack together, making their own unique probes.
And thanks to commercial smartphones, miniature electronics
have become widely available at lower cost,
which is great news for tiny satellites.
But is there such a thing as a satellite that's too small?
After all, we need to track these objects in space,
and a minuscule device is hard to see from earth,
making it potentially hazardous in low Earth orbit.
Charity Weeden, the President and co-founder
of space consulting firm Lquinox,
explained that the US Department of defense,
is tracking everything they possibly can
with an array of telescopes here on earth.
- They're tracking approximately
20,000 objects in space today.
However, there are at least a half a million smaller objects
between one centimeter and 10 centimeters,
that are difficult to track, or impossible to track.
And then millions beyond that,
below the one centimeter number.
- Any one of those millions of objects,
could cause a big problem.
All of those pieces of debris, are moving through space
at more than 17,000 miles per hour.
- So it would take something on the order of,
a millimeter or two to create damage to a satellite.
- If a company wants to launch a satellite safely,
and legally, they have a lot of government hurdles to clear.
There's paperwork to file with the FCC, the FAA,
and depending on what your satellite does,
you might need to loop in NOAA.
The red tape can pile up,
but it's largely there to keep earths orbit safe,
and to keep America's interests intact.
To get a sense for what this paperwork
actually feels like, we visited Spire,
a satellite operator based in San Francisco.
They've got around 60 small probes in orbit
that track ships and weather.
We asked them what it takes to convince the Government
that their satellites are safe,
and not a threat to anyone else's hardware.
- Part of it, is you file what your orbit is,
you file the size of your spacecraft,
you get approval on all these things.
You run a space debris analysis report,
and you submit that along as well, which gets reviewed.
There's always the odd occurrence
of what they call a conjunction,
where two satellites enter the same region.
And then they issue alerts
and if one of the satellites has propulsion,
they have the ability to move out of the way.
But it basically just comes down to
a lot of prep ahead of time.
- The risk of a collision was a concern for the FCC
when it reviewed an application
for the company Swarm Technologies.
Based in the Silicon Valley,
Swarm wants launch up to 100 satellites
that can provide internet connectivity from space.
And the company was eager to launch
its first four satellites;
tiny probes smaller than a standardized cube sat.
Those satellites were called the Spacebees.
Ultimately the FCC said no to Swarm,
because they thought the satellites were too small
and too hard to track by the Defense Department.
- [Female] Three, two, one, zero,
plus one, plus two, plus three, plus four--
- Despite the denial, Swarm launched its Spacebees anyway.
It was the first time in history
such an unauthorized launch had happened.
The FCC opened an investigation, which is still ongoing.
We asked Nick about the situation,
and the didn't really wanna get into it.
- You kinda go through a lot of emotions,
because we're a company
that we try to do things the right way.
You don't even wanna be associated with something
that you feel like to your industry a disservice.
- This all explains why that huge pile of regulations
is needed in the first place.
Swarm is one of dozens of start ups
and aerospace companies proposing to send
large constellations of satellites into orbit.
And that's going to make the low Earth orbit environment
a super congested place.
In fact, NASA says that once these satellites go up,
99% of them will need to be
taken out of orbit within five years.
Otherwise, the risk of in space collisions will go up.
And this happened once in 2009,
when a US commercial communication probe
collided with a defunct Russian satellite.
And in 2007, China launched a missile
at one of its own satellites
to show that it could take out a probe in orbit.
It was successful and it make a colossal mess.
- There were thousands of pieces that were shed,
and created essentially a ring around Earth, or debris.
- The worst case scenario here,
is something known at the Kessler Syndrome.
- [Charity] The Kessler Syndrome,
is a scenario whereby an object collides
with another object in space
and they beget thousands of pieces of debris.
And each of those debris are now a danger
to another satellite, and so on it goes.
And collision begets collision, begets collision.
And suddenly your at a point where
that orbit is not longer usable at all.
- And rogue satellite operators could increase this risk.
After the incident, Swarm CEO expressed remorse,
and called the incident a mistake.
Since then, Swarm has tried to make amends,
and the FCC even granted the company a new license
to launch an upcoming trio of satellites
on a Space-X mission.
It's unclear if the scandal will change the course
of regulations for the satellite industry though.
In the meantime, the Trump administration
is actively looking at ways
to streamline regulations for satellites.
Whatever happens, it's clear that we need
to be good custodians of space, that way,
we can all use it in the future.
- It behooves everyone to worry about this issue.
To have that fundamental space situation awareness,
to have those best practices in play.
But we really can't afford another collision in space.
- Hey everyone, thanks so much for watching our video.
If you want more science content like this,
be sure to check out our Verge Science YouTube channel.
I'll see you there.