Senate Appropriators Retain Funding for NOAA’s TraCSS Space Traffic System

The Senate Appropriations Committee completed consideration of the FY2026 Commerce-Justice-Science bill that funds NOAA and NASA today. The committee rejected the Trump Administration’s proposal to terminate NOAA’s Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) designed to provide data to civil and commercial satellite operators to avoid collisions. A coalition of space industry associations urged Congress to continue funding it.

Historically, DOD has been the source of data about the location of satellites orbiting Earth, providing access to its public database on Space-Track.org. But with the burgeoning number of commercial satellites now in orbit, DOD wants a civil agency to take on that task for non-military satellite operators so it can focus on its military mission. President Trump agreed in his first administration, signing Space Policy Directive-3 that assigned the job to the Department of Commerce, NOAA’s parent.

NOAA delegated the task of creating a Space Situational Awareness (SSA) system to the Office of Space Commerce (OSC) working in concert with commercial companies offering SSA data. The goal is to have a government system providing basic data for free, but premium services available though commercial entities. The effort got off to a slow start because Congress had to be convinced NOAA was the right organization for the job and then there was a 15 month gap before a new head of OSC was appointed after the transition to the Biden Administration, but OSC met a September 30, 2024 deadline to begin testing.

Nevertheless, this Trump Administration’s FY2026 budget request calls for terminating TraCSS on the basis that the private sector has demonstrated it can provide SSA and space traffic management (STM) services and the intent of SPD-3 has been met. OSC’s budget would drop from $65 million in FY2025 to $10 million in FY2026.

The Senate committee disagreed. In its report on the bill, the committee said SSA and STM are “inherently governmental” and provided $60 million “to continue expanding the operational capabilities of TraCSS.”

A coalition of seven industry associations representing more than 450 space, satellite and defense companies wrote to the House and Senate appropriations committees earlier this month urging Congress to fund TraCSS, warning that otherwise satellite operators will be at greater risk “putting critical missions in harm’s way, raising the cost of doing business, and potentially driving U.S. industry to relocate overseas.”