The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to reduce space junk in Earth’s orbit that’s why On Thursday the agency published a proposal (via Ars Technica). In this new proposal, FCC says that, if adopted, would put a deadline on how long non-geostationary satellites can stay in space.
We know that in the 1990s NASA guidelines were published and recommended that dead satellites should be deorbited within 25 years. The FCC wants to adopt a five-year rule that would require domestic satellite operators and companies that want access to the US market to dispose of their non-functioning satellites as soon as they can. FCC states in its proposal that “We believe it is no longer sustainable to leave satellites in LEO [low Earth orbit] to deorbit over decades.”
In space Satellites already would be exempt from the FCC’s guidelines. The FCC also proposes there be a two-year grandfathering period that starts on September 29th, the day it plans to vote on the regulation.
The proposal comes as the number of satellites in low Earth orbit is expected to increase over the next few years. The assumption is that for companies like Amazon, SpaceX, and OneWeb as many as 18,000 new satellites could be floating above the planet by 2025.
