NOAA Kicks Off TraCSS Space Situational Awareness System

NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce began beta testing its Tracking Coordination System for Space, or TraCSS, today to provide space situational awareness data to commercial satellite operators. At the moment it is Phase 1.0, a minimum viable product, but OSC expects the system to be operational in about 15 months with satellite owner/operators transitioning from DOD’s Space-Track system by the end of 2025.

Historically DOD has been the primary source of public data about the location of satellites and space debris — Space Situational Awareness (SSA) — through the Space-Track.org website. It also calculates “conjunction analyses” and issues warnings to government, commercial and international satellite operators about potential collisions.

The tremendous growth in the number of satellites and debris over the past decade or so is straining DOD’s resources, however.  In 2018, the Trump Administration issued Space Policy Directive-3 directing the Department of Commerce (DOC) to assume responsibility for providing data and analysis for non-DOD users. DOC assigned the task to NOAA and its Office of Space Commerce (OSC).

It’s taken a while for NOAA to implement that directive for reasons largely not of its own making. First it took Congress time to warm up to the idea. It wasn’t until after a study by the National Academy of Public Administration in 2020 that the appropriations committees began providing NOAA with the requisite funding. NOAA’s authorizing committees — the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee and the Senate Commerce, Science, and  Transportation Committee — still are debating legislation that would officially make this part of DOC’s responsibilities.

More delays ensued because of the presidential transition. It took the Biden Administration 15 months to appoint a new OSC Director, Richard DalBello, and more time was needed to hire other staff.

At the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies (AMOS) conference on September 20, DalBello laid out the timeline from 2018 to today.

During those years, however, OSC worked with DOD and commercial satellite owner/operators (O/Os) to figure out what the commercial sector needs from the government and the best way to make the transition from Space-Track.org to NOAA’s system, TraCSS.com.

Today is the first step, with the goal of moving the commercial sector over to TraCSS.com by the end of 2025 though DalBello stressed it is up to DOD to decide when to end Space-Track.org.

A lot has changed about the public availability of SSA data in recent years. The U.S. government isn’t the only source. Not only are companies like COMSPOC, LeoLabs and Slingshot Aerospace collecting and disseminating data on a commercial basis, but other countries have their own systems. That presents opportunities, but also challenges since not all the data may be consistent and not all countries may be sharing data.

“We know that around the globe today there are already SSA systems. Some we are highly collaborative with. We have a great relationship with the EUSST, the European SSA system. We’ve been working with them on technical and policy issues.  We have no relationship with the Chinese who are poised to launch 10,000 satellites.  So the world is very complicated right now in terms of we’re going to have SSA operators telling their own clients answers that may or may not be consistent with the answers that we in other systems are getting.” — Richard DalBello

NOAA is focused on four elements of a “global vision” for SSA, starting with the need for data standards.  They are working through international organizations like the U.N. Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, the International Telecommunication Union, and the International Standards Organization.

Much more work remains to be done. DalBello called what was rolled out today a “minimum viable product,” or MVP, part of an “agile development process.” Nine satellite operators — NOAA, Maxar, Telesat, Intelsat, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Planet Labs, Eutelsat Oneweb, Iridium, and the Aerospace Corporation — now are receiving safety notifications as part of the TraCSS beta testing.

In a joint statement, DOC Deputy Secretary Don Graves said DOC “is building this system in close cooperation with industry partners to harness and promote commercial innovation in space. Together, we are helping to ensure the safe and sustainable growth of the space economy.”  DOD’s John Hill, performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, added that DOD and DOC are “working side by side … to ensure the seamless transfer of responsibility for civil and commercial Space Situational Awareness services and information.”