Session
Weekend Poster Session 2
Location
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Abstract
On September 29, 2022, the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) adopted a regulation to address the growing issue of orbital debris, requiring spacecraft in orbits of 2,000 km or less to deorbit as soon as possible, but within no more than five years after the end of the mission. These regulations will be enforced starting in 2024 and will apply to network providers both licensed in the United States and foreign-licensed seeking U.S. market access.
Given the updated legislation, various communications providers may find that their traditional system architectures are not compliant with the five-year rule. In this work, the authors assess the outputs of Orbital Debris Assessment Reports (ODARs) operators have submitted to the FCC and then utilize NASA’s Debris Assessment Software (DAS) and Ansys’s Systems Toolkit (STK) to determine deorbit lifetime for standard bus sizes.
From the data analysis, the relationship between different parameters (such as apogee, area-to-mass ratio, and mission end year) and their respective deorbit time is mapped to create a predictive, accessible reference intended to provide both commercial satellite providers and academic small satellite operators with an efficient method to initially gauge whether the design of their systems will comply with the updated legislations.
SSC23-WP2-04 Poster
FCC Five Year Deorbit Compliance Tools for Standard Low Earth Orbiting SmallSats Employing Passive Re-Entry Techniques
Utah State University, Logan, UT
On September 29, 2022, the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) adopted a regulation to address the growing issue of orbital debris, requiring spacecraft in orbits of 2,000 km or less to deorbit as soon as possible, but within no more than five years after the end of the mission. These regulations will be enforced starting in 2024 and will apply to network providers both licensed in the United States and foreign-licensed seeking U.S. market access.
Given the updated legislation, various communications providers may find that their traditional system architectures are not compliant with the five-year rule. In this work, the authors assess the outputs of Orbital Debris Assessment Reports (ODARs) operators have submitted to the FCC and then utilize NASA’s Debris Assessment Software (DAS) and Ansys’s Systems Toolkit (STK) to determine deorbit lifetime for standard bus sizes.
From the data analysis, the relationship between different parameters (such as apogee, area-to-mass ratio, and mission end year) and their respective deorbit time is mapped to create a predictive, accessible reference intended to provide both commercial satellite providers and academic small satellite operators with an efficient method to initially gauge whether the design of their systems will comply with the updated legislations.
