Space News by Jeff Foust — March 13, 2018
The launch of several cubesats by an American company without authorization from a federal agency has the rest of the industry worried of a potential regulatory and public relations backlash.
IEEE Spectrum first reported March 10 that Swarm Technologies, a Silicon Valley-based startup operating in stealth mode, flew four picosatellites as secondary payloads on an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in January. The SpaceBee satellites were identified in materials by the Indian space agency at the time as “two-way satellite communications and data relay†satellites, but did not identify the owner. Each SpaceBee was one-quarter the size of a single-unit cubesat.
Swarm Technologies applied for an experimental authorization with the Federal Communications Committee to communicate with the spacecraft. However, on Dec. 12, one month before the launch, the FCC dismissed the request.
“The applicant proposes to deploy and operate 4 spacecraft that are smaller than 10 cm in one of their three dimensions,†wrote Anthony Serafini, chief of the Experimental Licensing Branch, in a letter to Sara Spangelo of Swarm Technologies dismissing the authorization. That size, he said, made them too small to reliably track even with the addition of Ku-band radar reflectors on the spacecraft.
“In the absence of tracking at the same level as available for objects of 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm, and in the event of a conjunction with an operational spacecraft, the ability of operational spacecraft to reliably assess the need for and plan effective collision avoidance maneuvers will be reduced or eliminated,†he wrote.
More:
http://spacenews.com/industry-worried-about-regulatory-backlash-after-unauthorized-cubesat-launch/
