Space traffic coordination’s threat of derailmentby Jeff Foust
|
| The Office of Space Commerce has been working to have TraCSS fully operational by January 2026, providing space safety services to all satellite operators. |
Yet programs with budgets “only” in the millions of dollars can have major consequences if they are, or are not, funded. That is the case of the Office of Space Commerce, located within NOAA. The office is responsible for commercial remote sensing licensing and other advocacy for commercial space, but its biggest, and newest, effort is standing up the Traffic Coordination System for Space, or TraCSS (pronounced “tracks”). That would take over civil space traffic coordination work currently handed by the Defense Department, as outlined in Space Policy Directive (SPD) 3 in the first Trump Administration.
By the time the second Trump Administration started in January, TraCSS was well on its way to beginning service, having begun beta testing at the end of September (see “Getting space traffic coordination on track,” The Space Review, September 30, 2024.) Several satellite operators had agreed to work with the office to test TraCSS and provide feedback that would be incorporated into later versions ahead of it formally starting services in about a year.
In a talk at the Space Symposium in Colorado in April, Janice Starzyk, acting director of the Office of Space Commerce, said TraCSS had implemented upgrades as it moved in “program increment,” or version, 1.1 of the system. That offered “some big jumps in capability,” she said, including the ability of satellite operators to upload ephemerides of their satellites and perform on-demand screening of potential conjunctions.
There had been hiccups along the way, such as protest one losing bidder filed when the office awarded a contract to Slingshot Aerospace last November to develop the “presentation layer” or web interface for TraCSS. That halted work on the contract until the Government Accountability Office could review, and ultimately, reject the protest in March.
That pushed back the start of full services of TraCSS by a few months. “By January 2026, TraCSS.gov will be fully operational,” Starzyk said. “We will be able to accept all the users interested in joining the system.”
Another issue came up in February when NOAA moved to fire probationary employees who had only recently joined the agency as part of cost-cutting moves. That swept up many people working in the office on TraCSS, including its program manager, Dmitry Poisik, who had only recently joined the office but had decades of federal government experience serving in the US Navy. Poisik was rehired several days later.
That move, though, caused some in the industry to worry about TraCSS. “We don’t know if there is an organizational concern about the future of TraCSS,” said Ruth Stilwell, founder of Aerospace Policy Solutions, during a panel discussion at a space traffic management conference at the University of Texas Austin in early March. She said that it was unclear if NOAA rehired Poisik because they concluded his job was important or because of lawsuits about the firing of probationary employees across the government.
By April, there were rumors that the White House was proposing to effectively cancel TraCSS in its fiscal year 2026 budget request, based on leaked details of a budget “passback” document to NOAA from the Office of Management and Budget. But it was not until NOAA released its detailed budget request at the end of June did the threat to TraCSS come into focus.
| “If funding for the TraCSS program is cut, numerous American commercial SSA providers are likely to go out of business while thousands U.S. satellite operator's spacecraft fleets will be placed in peril,” a letter from AIAA and CSF stated. |
In the document, NOAA blamed the previous administration for delays in developing TraCSS. “Under the prior administration, DOC [Department of Commerce] was unable to complete a government owned and operated public-facing database and traffic coordination system,” the document stated. During that time, “private industry has proven that they have the capability and the business model to provide civil operators with SSA data and STM services using the releasable portion of the DOD catalog.”
NOAA requested just $10 million for the Office of Space Commerce, enough for it to carry out its other work but not TraCSS. The office had received $65 million in 2024 and requested about $75 million in 2025.
Instead, NOAA said that commercial space situational awareness (SSA) services could handle what TraCSS could do. “The Administration confirms the intent of SPD-3 has been satisfied by supporting private industry to provide SSA services, including through offerings of both a free basic service as well as fee-based concierge services to civil operators,” the budget document stated. “DOC will continue to monitor the use of SSA services by civil operators to determine whether additional policies are warranted to ensure space remains a safe domain to operate.”
Yet industry groups argued that they needed TraCSS to support those emerging SSA providers. “A commercial market for SSA data largely does not exist as European and Chinese governments provide data to their civilian and commercial satellite operators free of charge,” the heads of two industry groups, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the Commercial Space Federation (CSF), wrote in a letter to the acting administrator of NOAA, Laura Grimm, in late June.
“If funding for the TraCSS program is cut, numerous American commercial SSA providers are likely to go out of business while thousands U.S. satellite operator's spacecraft fleets will be placed in peril,” the letter stated. “OSC [Office of Space Commerce] is the right civil agency to coordinate this important SSA work in concert with the Space Force’s network for military operations.”
Once NOAA released its budget confirming plans to cancel TraCSS, those and other industry groups accelerated their lobbying. On July 7, several groups, representing more than 450 companies, sent letters to Congress calling on appropriators to reject the proposed cancellation and fund TraCSS.
A key argument is that continuing TraCSS would fulfill the goal of SPD-3 of reducing the workload of the Space Force, which is handling space traffic coordination today, allowing to focus more on national security roles. “Keeping space traffic coordination within the Department of Commerce preserves military resources for core defense missions and prevents the conflation of space safety with military control – critical to U.S. leadership in setting international standards and norms for space activities,” the letters stated.
However, there has been an undercurrent of private criticism within the industry of the Office of Space Commerce’s approach to TraCSS. They argued that the approach the office was taking for the system didn’t take advantage of new technologies, like artificial intelligence, that could reduce the cost and complexity of the system and do away with things like an operations center in Colorado staffed 24/7.
AIAA and CSF, in a separate letter to congressional appropriators in late June, appeared to acknowledge that criticism, but said TraCSS should continue. “There are reforms that could be made to the TraCSS/STC program to adjust the effort, in line with OSC’s original vision of a small government footprint and partnering with commercial entities to outsource capabilities and services,” the letter stated. “There may be no need for a new SSA command center or additional studies that admire the problem.”
The July letter, though, made clear that industry was opposed to cancelling TraCSS. Among the groups that signed on was the Commercial SSA Coalition, a collection of SSA companies that would presumably benefit if the administration’s proposal to cancel TraCSS and rely on commercial providers was enacted.
Through it all, one unanswered question was who in the administration—in NOAA, the Commerce Department, or the White House—wanted to kill a program that had its roots in the first Trump Administration.
“The number one thing we’re trying to find out is who actually advocated for this to be cut,” said Dave Cavossa, president of CSF, in an interview. “We haven’t been able to find someone willing to raise their hand and say why they cut this.”
He said in the early July interview that there was optimism that appropriators would reject the cuts. “I’m hearing optimism that there will be some money put back in the budget. I’m just not sure what that’s going to be yet.”
On July 18, the Senate Appropriations Committee released the report accompanying the commerce, justice and science (CJS) spending bill that the committee approved the previous day. They decided to almost fully restore funding for TraCSS, providing the office with $60 million.
“In compliance with Space Policy Directive 3, the Committee continues to support efforts to transition non-defense space traffic management and space situational awareness responsibilities from the Department of Defense to OSC,” the report stated. “The responsibilities of space traffic management and space situational awareness are inherently governmental.”
House appropriators followed suit last week, releasing the report for their CJS bill, which is still pending before the House Appropriations Committee (a markup of the bill by the committee, scheduled for last Thursday, was postponed when the House elected to start its August recess early.) They provided $50 million for TraCSS.
However, the House report called on the Office of Space Commerce to rely more on the Defense Department. “Given NOAA’s role in leading civil and commercial SSA activities, the Committee encourages NOAA to avoid duplicative investments in new proprietary systems and instead prioritize the acquisition and integration of existing, government-proven technologies that have been operationalized by the Department of Defense, including those currently supporting the U.S. Space Force mission,” the report states.
| “Transferring this program to Commerce via SPD-3 was focused on taking this program off the DoD’s plate and helping sure up a commercial SSA industrial base,” Cavossa said. |
Industry officials argued that ran against the whole purpose of SPD-3 of reducing the burden on the Defense Department. Moreover, TraCSS already uses a catalog of space objects provided by the Space Force, which will be augmented with data from commercial and international partners.
“Transferring this program to Commerce via SPD-3 was focused on taking this program off the DoD’s plate and helping sure up a commercial SSA industrial base,” Cavossa said. “The government should rely more heavily on commercial capabilities in building this program – not less.”
It’s not clear when, or if, this issue will be resolved, as appropriations bills face bigger challenges in the months to come. At a Space Foundation event last week, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), chair of the Senate CJS appropriations subcommittee, said he was hoping to attach his subcommittee’s bill to another spending bill pending in the full Senate to expedite its passage.
“I’m worried that the appropriations process may deteriorate over time, particularly if there is another rescission effort,” he said, or request by the White House to revoke funds already appropriated. Congress passed once such rescission earlier this month. “I think the atmosphere may sour on the appropriations process, and it’s important for us to get our bill, this bill” through the appropriations process.
The debate about TraCSS has not affected work on the system itself, which continues to advance through beta testing. In May, TraCSS moved into program increment 1.2 that included new “bulk submission” capabilities for satellite data, “ideal for operators of large satellite constellations.”
On July 14, the office announced it had added one such operator to the TraCSS beta test: SpaceX. The inclusion of SpaceX, which alone operates about 8,000 Starlink satellites, vastly increases the scale of the beta test.
The office said that development of TraCSS remains on schedule. “TraCSS is proceeding steadily toward production release scheduled for January 2026,” it stated. Provided Congress can find $50 million or so.
Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted.