National delegations were invited to give their vision of a common European approach to space traffic management (STM) at a meeting of the EU Council’s Space Working Group on Wednesday 17 March. The preliminary discussions were structured by a note from the European Commission and revealed an appetite among delegations for a European response.
There are currently around 130 million objects smaller than 1 cm orbiting the Earth, regularly threatening infrastructure. Recently, a satellite of the European Galileo programme was forced to manoeuvre to avoid a piece of debris.
As a result, the debate is becoming increasingly acute, especially since the recent presentation of a European Commission action plan including a flagship project on space traffic management (see EUROPE 12663/13).
The EU’s objective is also to urgently develop its own approach to STM in order to be able to offer an alternative to the US approach. Yet, at present, no Member State has a stabilised approach. Germany is expressing a real political will, however, as are Italy, Spain and, to a lesser extent, France, to develop a common approach.
Thus, to help structure the discussions, the European Commission has submitted a note (a ‘non-paper’) to the Member States as food for thought. In this note, seen by EUROPE, the European Commission asks no fewer than 12 questions.
These range from the state of the art of national and international initiatives on STM to legal considerations (choice of binding and/or non-binding legal instruments), to the issue of governance, which is a very delicate subject in the space field (see EUROPE 12606/6).
The European Commission wants to take a bottom-up approach and start by defining the types of activities that could be covered by space traffic management. In its note, the institution gives some examples: – collision avoidance activities; – monitoring fragmentations of objects in orbit; – monitoring objects threatening to enter Earth’s atmosphere; – cataloguing objects; – development of measures to limit the production of debris; – object removal activities.
During the exchanges, several Member States, such as Belgium, reportedly insisted on respecting domestic jurisdictions. Some Member States, such as Germany and Italy, reportedly stressed the importance of European coordination and the need for consultation between the EU and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Still other national delegations drew attention to an international approach, through the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). France would have questioned the relevance of a dual (civilian and military) approach to space traffic management.
To consult the European Commission’s note: http://bit.ly/3luryNv (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)