Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On Thursday, local time, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a new rule that scrapped satellites must be removed from low-Earth orbit within five years of the end of the mission.

The purpose of the new rule is to deal with the increasing amount of space junk in Earth's orbit, requiring decommissioned satellites to leave their original orbit faster.

Today, low-Earth orbit is the densest area of satellites. New rules issued by the FCC say failed satellites in low-Earth orbit must be removed from orbit "as soon as practicable and within five years after the end of the mission".

According to ITU standards, all satellites with an orbital altitude of less than 2000 km need to be out of orbit within 25 years of failure to avoid generating too much space junk and increasing the risk of collision. Industry insiders have long criticized that this standard is too loose. Even NASA suggested a few years ago that the 25-year period be shortened to five years.

In early September this year, FCC released a draft saying that "satellites less than 2000 kilometers should be actively re-entered the atmosphere and burned within five years after retirement."

"25 years is too long to wait that long, especially for satellites in low-Earth orbit," FCC president Jessica Nathan Simington said at the meeting on Thursday. This provision was unanimously adopted by the participants.

The goal of the new regulations is to prevent the danger of space junk and debris from spreading. It is estimated that at present, more than 100 million pieces of space junk are flying out of control in Earth orbit, ranging from pieces the size of coins to entire rocket boosters. Experts say most of the wreckage is too small to be tracked.

There have been many collisions in space before. Each collision may produce thousands of new fragments, and each fragment may trigger more collision events. The famous theory "Kessler syndrome" warns that when space junk is too dense, a satellite will have a chain reaction when it deviates from its orbit or is hit by a meteor, and a large number of satellites will be destroyed and turned into space junk, causing the earth's orbit to become more and more messy, even making space exploration and satellite launch impossible.

Rosenworth said that since the 1950s, about 10,000 satellites around the world have entered Earth orbit, more than half of which have failed and have been identified as "space junk." He added that these fragments, large and small, pose a risk to communications and space security.

FCC's plan to introduce new rules has been questioned by some US lawmakers. They said the rules could create "conflicting guidelines" and did not have a clear congressional mandate. But Thursday's vote went ahead and was passed.

"what is at risk is not only the satellite and rocket launch industry, which is worth $279 billion a year, but also all the jobs that depend on these industries," FCC said in a document released earlier this month. "if left unchecked, orbital debris could affect the interests of all industries and reduce opportunities in every sector of the economy."

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