In the years ahead, the long-running nightmare of the nuclear Cold War — mutually assured destruction — could return in a new context on the final frontier, a Pentagon adviser said today at a Seattle-based space policy conference.
Brad Townsend, a space strategy and policy adviser to the leadership of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, raised the alarm about anti-satellite weapons, or ASATs, during a virtual symposium sponsored by the University of Washington’s Space Policy and Research Center.
He noted that China and Russia are already experimenting with methods to disable other nations’ satellites in the event of a future conflict. But in the course of destroying an enemy satellite, attackers could set off a catastrophic chain reaction of out-of-control orbital debris.
Such a phenomenon, sometimes referred to as the Kessler syndrome, has fed into the plotlines for movies such as “Gravity” and novels such as “SevenEves.” But Townsend warned that the threat is more than just a science-fiction possibility.
“If nations start arming with ASATs as a way to deter other nations from attacking their orbital assets, they risk creating a new form of mutually assured destruction,” he said.
Townsend said the prospect of setting off a Kessler syndrome should have caused the world’s space powers to back away from the technology. “But as India’s 2019 test demonstrated, it hasn’t,” he said.
So what is to be done? One step would be to create an international system for sharing information about orbiting satellites, in order to head off unintended collisions. Another would be to encourage the development of space systems that could move satellites to orbital graveyards once they go out of operation — systems like Northrop Grumman’s MEV-1 satellite tug.
But to head off an intentional satellite attack, Townsend said the world’s nations would have to agree to ban the use of anti-satellite weapons, just as they’ve banned the use of biological weapons. “The time is right for de-escalation efforts before we have that future event,” he said.
In international talks about space weapons, the United States favors an approach known as transparency and confidence-building measures, or TCBM. China and Russia, meanwhile, have their own proposal for a treaty on the prevention of placement of weapons in outer space, known as PPWT. Each approach has run into opposition from the other side.
Matthew Stubbs, an expert in space law at the University of Adelaide in Australia, said there’s “considerable pessimism about the prospects of multilateral rulemaking for space at the moment.” He said the most likely scenario for resolving the issue involves a series of bilateral and multilateral agreements. NASA is taking such an approach for the Artemis Accords, a set of agreements that are expected to govern future moon exploration.
The space weapons issue illustrates how quickly the space frontier is becoming “a contested domain,” said Lt. Gen. John Shaw, who is the commander of the Combined Force Space Component Command as well as the commander of the U.S. Space Force’s Space Operations Command.
When the Pentagon began building satellite systems for command and control, “we built them as if we were in a benign domain,” Shaw said. But potential adversaries were quick to take note of the U.S. military’s growing reliance on space capabilities — which led to the Trump administration’s creation of the Space Force as a separate military branch last year.
More from the SPARC symposium: Blue Origin fleshes out plan for 2023 cargo delivery to the moon
Would space policy change if Joe Biden becomes president next year, as expected based on the results of this week’s election? Neither Shaw nor Townsend addressed that question — but Saadia Pekkanen, co-director of the Space Policy and Research Center, said Biden was “likely to stay the course.”
“If you are imagining that there might be a radical shift in space policy, I don’t quite see that,” she said.
During today’s keynote session, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., noted that Congress still has to approve a significant piece of legislation pertaining to space policy: the NASA Authorization Act of 2019. “I can’t promise you that it’s going to get done in a lame-duck session of Congress,” she said, “but if it doesn’t, I will guarantee you it will be done in the very early part of 2021.”
Cantwell, who’s the ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said the authorization bill would smooth the way for NASA to boost its support for landing systems capable of putting astronauts on the moon’s surface. That could include the landing system that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is developing along with industry partners such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
The senator noted that Blue Origin, which is based in Kent, Wash., has become a prominent player in Washington state’s space industry, which accounts for $1.8 billion of economic activity annually. Other players include SpaceX, which is building its Starlink satellites at its facility in Redmond, Wash.; and Aerojet Rocketdyne’s Redmond operation, which is building rocket thrusters for future NASA missions.
“It’s not surprising that all of those efforts have led recently to our state being called ‘the Silicon Valley of Space,'” Cantwell said.
When it comes to future space exploration, NASA’s Artemis program to put astronauts on the moon looms largest on the horizon. The Trump administration has pressed NASA to execute the program’s first crewed landing by 2024, but Cantwell said that deadline might slip.
“We’re very excited about Artemis in general. … There’s not always consensus about when and what time frame we should have to meet this Artemis goal,” Cantwell said. Hitting the 2024 deadline “would require an enormous amount of resources.”
Wendy Whitman Cobb, an associate professor of strategy and security studies at the U.S. Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, said the Artemis program was likely to continue even if the White House changes hands, as expected, but with a different timetable.
“A Biden administration might be a little bit better at letting that go a little bit. … If anything, I think we might see a little bit more emphasis on the commercial capabilities and commercialization of space on the part of NASA,” she said. “That could be, just because there’s that natural sort of flow over from Vice President Biden’s experience with the Obama administration.”
