Not enough, they should be require to fix their mistake by sending out another Satellite to either retrieve it or push it out where it was indented to be.
Additionally to prevent a company from just going bankrupt they should be required to pay in advance a fee to a fund (ala FDIC) that will deal with issues that have to be dealt with. In this case it may be "ok" but what if this satellite was not out of the active geostationary zone and posed a risk to others important satellites?
> Not enough, they should be require to fix their mistake by sending out another Satellite to either retrieve it or push it out where it was indented to be.
Seems like a plan with a bad risk/reward ratio. Right now the satellite isn't where it's supposed to be, but neither is it directly in the way of other geostationary satellites. But if you send up another satellite to deliberately interface with this one and move both up, you risk something going wrong and either getting stuck with two satellites in that position, or worse, both crashing into each other and making a huge mess. It's probably better to wait until the technology for grappling satellites in space is mature. This is presently an active area of research and development (OSAM), so a bit of patience should pay off.
> Joke quality aside, you marked something as a quote which isn't close to one, afaict.
Maybe read the first line of the parent comment more carefully?
> Not enough, they should be require to fix their mistake by sending out another Satellite to either retrieve it or push it out where it was INDENTED TO BE[emphasis mine].
you are commenting on this after it was corrected. so the snark is a bad look.
the error wasn't the typo in `indented`. it was that a single newline ("CR") is like an html space in HN formatting. it doesn't start a new paragraph. GP notes that he only used a single "CR" and thus his own commentary ran together with his intended (also indented, in this case) quote.
Asking that first point of a company right now would probably just kill the geostationary launch industry for a few years. Those kinds of mission rescue/extension vehicles are still under development. There was one such mission a few years ago, but it was a special case for reasons I can't recall right now. At the moment I think there are a handful of companies working on both adapters to be placed on the initial satellite and the MEV to go with it which would be launched in case of a problem with certain systems.
Plus, retrieving it is almost guaranteed to be unrealistic. It's out near geostationary orbit. The only options are to have an MEV move it into normal geostationary orbit or dump it into a graveyard orbit.
The direction is good though. Instead of a fine they could be required to pay a space janitor to clean up their mess in the next N years. That would provide funding and motivation for space janitor companies to improve their technology faster.
In an alternate reality there's an equal but opposite HN quarterback:
"Too much! I get sending a message with a small initial fine like 150k plus requiring a compliance plan, but this high amount is a step too far. Prepayment is just the epitome of regulatory capture IMO. Even for selfish reasons a satellite company will strive to keep their satellites minimally functional and safe from any systemic dangers in orbit. But I guess Uncle Sam always has to get his cut."
Realistically I almost never see upvoted comments saying a governmental fine was too much, even when the fine is, say, significantly greater than the entire companies revenue.
$150k sounds like a rounding error for a satellite operator. Is there a rapidly increasing fee schedule or other penalties, such us restricted future launches? Otherwise it would be folded into the regular operating expenses.
> Otherwise it would be folded into the regular operating expenses.
If you read the consent decree[1] you can see that the monetary fee is not the only thing DISH agreed to.
In section 18 you can see they agreed to implement a compliance plan. Basically they improve on their fuel tracking, and end of mission planning. This makes it more likely that this thing won't happen again, and also makes it easier to argue if it still happens that it happened wilfully.
This is like getting a traffic infraction warning ticket from a police officer instead of an actual summons. If it has the desired effect then it's better than the alternative.
It's not actually that big of a company. They only made ~$200M last year.
But 10% of their revenue is $1.7B. It would cost them almost a decade's worth of profit, so that's how much they'd spend to prevent it, which is plenty enough to influence legislation. "Percent of revenue" fines are dumb and create crazy incentives.
Well of course it won't look like a traffic ticket, when they just pay with a credit card online and call it done. There is paperwork and "promises" and agreements. They have to have a compliance "officer" now and they have to report that propellant tracking has been implemented. That's still a drop in the bucket to have to shorten the life of their satellites. The fuel alone probably costs more than $150k.
Ah yes, the true day-to-day life we all experience launching multi-million dollar satellites by a multi-billion dollar company, endangering the safe launch and operation of other satellites not just domestic but globally.
If they couldn't be bothered to put enough fuel in the cannister to deorbit, they get fined. I don't see why that requires a full trial.
I just find it strange that in this and the other story, everyone is saying that the initial fine should have been larger.
Is the theory that the company is going to ignore this? That seems implausible; I'm guessing that they're scrambling to avoid further problems and make sure the relationship with their regulator is good. From the regulator's perspetive, what benefit would it do to actually put them out of business, or to seriously wound them, or scare them more? Or, are we trying to establish a precedent that "you may be seriously damaged even upon first infraction"? Is that the behavior we want companies to anticipate - that the government will attack super hard upon first infraction? If that's what we want, okay. But to me that seems too strong, since there are tons of laws and rules with arbitrary enforcement; given that it makes sense that when agencies get involved, they initially fire warning shots like this so companies know someone is paying attention. Then in a month, if the company hasn't taken serious steps to solve this, the regulators can start nuking companies who don't comply. I'm definitely pro regulation, but there's a trade-off because companies need to know the rules so they can plan, budget, consult, etc. so having this initial trigger that working to figure out what is allowed/forbidden/etc is good. Companies pre-emptively being extremely scared will have huge costs (money/environmental/speed), too, especially when it's for things which don't matter or which agencies don't actually care about.
I think its a combination of pitiful fines aganst large tech companies in the past which actually have been ignored, and the concern over having so much debris in orbit that space travel becomes difficult or impossible. We could literally ground ourselves - its important to remember that things up there won't come down.
While I agree at you that this isnt the adtech buisness staffed by ghouls that see fines as a cost of doing buisness, the idea of adding to space debris is rightfully met with horror, so any amount of money short of compoany-ending will be seen as people getting off lightly
From everything I've seen the tech nerd world basically sees fines as existing on one of two extremes, either they're a cost of doing business or they're company destroying. The idea that there can be fines or penalty schemes of any other effect is largely ignored. Since 150k is pretty small, everyone is of course advocating for a 150 million fine because that's the only other kind of fine that exists in their minds.
Yes. As pointed out to me above, this was actually the result of a consultation; so they've already met and worked together to come to this conclusion - possibly the fine is a symbol of "we're serious and have the right to fine", but just puts a stamp on the relationship they have now on how to go forward. It's also a message to the industry about what expectations will be in the future.
Companies do have a choice in many cases, so being super aggro against them isn't really beneficial. If they can be reined in by threats+negotiation, while still doing business here (within our oversight) it seems ideal.
"Don't ruin space for everyone" is like, the most clear cut possible example of a state responsibility I've ever seen. What do you think government is for? What do you want it to be for, if not this?
> I'm not saying anything about this specific case
Please don't assume that by discussing the appropriate level of initial fine in an interaction between a company and a regulatory agency, that I'm saying government doesn't have a role here. That does not follow at all.
I'm more questioning the presumption in this comment section that the regulator should have been harsher to start with.
To me it seems natural that a referee in an interaction will start off gently saying "hey, I'm paying attention to this issue now, here's a minor fine, but watch out" so the players know to care. If they continue misbehaving, they'll start being thrown out of the game.
But saying that the ref should start off his first enforcement with seriously damaging penalties doesn't seem reasonable. Nearly every sport in practice involves a gap between the rules "as written" and the rules as "as enforced" - i.e. fouling, traveling in the NBA, strike zone in MLB. In all of these cases, players need 1) knowledge of what's going on in this game and 2) consistency from the ref so they can adjust and not be outplayed.
Why don't refs always enforce rules to the max? To me this is a key aspect of human systems, the human freedom of refs as people to adjust to make things work well, especially when the rules as written are insane or incorrect, and are extremely hard to change upstream (due to government/publicity/etc) problems, in addition to just plain incompetence in congress.
i.e. "The NBA won't redefine the traveling rule to reflect reality, but refs enforce the 'real' rule which is used on playgrounds, and everyone knows the level of enforcement that will be used in each situation, even though refs never actually write it down."
You may want an exact match between rules/laws & enforcement, but it doesn't work that way with human referees. Same thing here. Enforcement is a kind of communication and negotiation between parties; starting off by nuking the company will scare them so badly, others will abandon the space or the US due to the harshness. Also, the discussions that come out of this will be things like "what's an efficient way for the company to do what the agency wants? Keep in mind our restrictions here (e.g. every rocket launch also has some harm/risk to your priorities; is there a way we can help all of our concerns from within the multiple ways to solve this issue?)"
> Imagine in your daily life, suddenly a new government entity announces you owe it money.
I understand the impetus to make the story about liberty, but this is not a "new government entity" "suddenly" appearing. Dish is in the business of satellite communications. That field is strictly regulated by the FCC. The company applied for permission before launch, then later applied permission to modify their authorisation, and they themselves reported the discrepancy at the end of mission.
There is nothing "sudden" about this.
> Was there even a trial?
No. There wasn't. To quote from the consent decree: "The Company and the Bureau subsequently engaged in settlement negotiations. To resolve this matter, the Company and the Bureau enter into this Consent Decree and agree to the following terms and conditions." That is to say this is a settlement.
> Or did some guys get together in a room and decide you should just pay them,
Yes. Some "guys" from the bureau and some from the company got together in a room.
> without any consultation?
No. The representatives of the company were in the room. The general counsel of the company signed the consent decree.
Thanks, I appreciate you putting that together. So this could be a good result - the regulator confirming it has power to fine, and will be aggressive about it, and the company's signoff proves they agree and will implement fixes. We'll know how well it works based on if there's a repeat in the next few years.
It establishes a level of liability and bad behaviour which means if it collides with something they'll probably have an easy time suing dish for the cost of the satellite (millions).
In general, a lot of government fees and penalties are not just about that penalty, it's about the fact that if you do it again, the next one will be much, much bigger. Read the $150K as a warning shot across the bow.
There are some places where this doesn't seem to operate very well, particularly in the financial world, but in general, this is often the idea behind these penalties. Especially for the first time a law is getting enforced; it isn't really very just to ignore a law for years/decades and then one day out of the blue slam someone with multi-million dollar judgments. There are even some Common Law doctrines that the targets could use to argue against such penalties holding up in court, though, as always, trying to counter a written law with common law general doctrines is tricky. But I'd say there's at least a good chance you could get a sudden, huge initial penalty argued way down in a lawsuit.
Yes. And also, it's bad PR for the team responsible. Managers don't want to have trouble hiring people. After the first fine, the message can be "we're modernizing to stop this from happening!" But getting multiple fines over years is going to make the best of the talent poor essentially unavailable to hire.
You really think their hiring pool is going to shrink because they got fined for $150,000? The person they are hiring is likely going to cost more than the whole fine.
And OK, let's say they keep getting fined. Seems like a badge of honor these days. Move fast and break things, right? The government just doesn't like, get us, man. We're the good guys here and they're trying to slow us down with red tape and bureaucracy.
> Saying you’re a rocket engineer sounds pretty neat, but the shine wears off a bit if people recognise your employer for negative reasons.
Which is what Tesla is experiencing at the moment in their facility Grünheide [1]... a toxic mixture of low wages, bad employment conditions, and reports about unsafe practices.
I think the shine has legitimately worn off on Tesla, though. I mean, how many times can you lie [1] about FSD before everyone writes you off as the boy who cried wolf.
From the outside how would you tell the difference between this and a back door agreement between regulators to offer a low fine in exchange for favors down the line?
Banks keep getting hit with (compared to revenue) low fines over and over again. This explanation is always given. Also the people who decide what the fine is going to be keep getting jobs at banks.
Curious. Willing to bet some of these regulators kids end up at Dish over the next few years.
In reference to your previous question, along with the obvious brute fact of the fines not escalating for the same infraction over time, I would take a first stab at an answer being that the stronger the "revolving door" the less likely the fines are to be serious.
Note that just a one way industry -> regulator won't necessarily produce this effect, because in that situation a regulator can still want to flex by producing meaningful fines. But the more the cycle is industry -> regulator -> and back to industry, the more the regulator is going to be thinking in terms of what will come around when they're in the industry again.
This debris is probably actually pretty cheap to remove by chance.
The orbit it is in is perfectly between geostationary and the disposal orbit. That means any other satellite who is travelling from one orbit to the other can stop off on-route for no fuel or time cost.
'grabbing' a satellite is fairly easy too. Even a fridge magnet would be enough to grab this satellite - since even tiny forces over many hours are enough in space.
I therefore suspect that it would be possible to complete this disposal with a satellite already on orbit - ie. not specially designed for the purpose, and using very little additional fuel - perhaps some operational satellites even have enough extra in reserve.
Are you really suggesting some satellite drop whatever its doing, break its orbit to meet up with this thing and attempt to push it, all while risking irreparable damage? These things are made for a lonely existence in space, so they don't have bumpers or cameras or little fridge magnets for docking with other spacecraft.
I'd say the biggest risk is that upon one of the pushes of one satellite toward the other, the propulsion of an old satellite fails, keeps accelerating and causes a crash.
> collision speeds would be measured in millimeters per second, and forces in millinewtons.
What satellite ending their end of life, and already in orbit do you suggest are capable of such delicate manoeuvring? This is a very delicate task you are describing, and most satellites are simply not designed for it.
> The main risk is that the satellites touch at the 'wrong angle' or blocking an attitude control thruster.
If someone tries this, the most likely outcome is that the satelites wizz by each other without ever touching. If you somehow manage to aim the "pushing" satellite accurately enough at the "stranded" satellite they would most likely collide at anything from a few hundred meter/s to a few of km/s depending on the orbital arrangements.
I don't think you understand what geostationary orbit is. They all have to be going the same direction (with the Earth's rotation) or else it isn't stationary (not moving) over the geo (earth).
As a result I think you're misunderstanding what the orbital dynamics would be.
> I don't think you understand what geostationary orbit is.
I do understand what geostationary orbit is.
The commenter I was responding to said "any other satellite who is travelling from one orbit to the other can stop off on-route for no fuel or time cost". If they wanted to only talk about geo sats they should have said that.
But sure, let's think about using a geo sat to fly this intercept. Let's just pick Echostar-8 as a concrete example. It is at 6.4 degree inclination while Echostart-7 is at 1.5 degree. So you will at best have a glancing blow between these two.
GEO satellites typically don't use hall effect thrusters for much. Primary propulsion for large GEO satellites is typically a hypergolic system. Ion thrusters, if present, are typically a station keeping tool.
For example, the satellite bus used by EchoStar-7, which is the satellite in question here (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_A2100)
uses Hydrazine and NTO for primary propulsion, with hydrazine monoprop for atittude control, and the monoprop thrusters and ion thrusters for station keeping.
While the new version of that bus has the option for all-electric propulsion, it really isn't clear how popular that option has actually been. There aren't really many details about it.
Even assuming that it would be practical to match the inoperative's satellite orbit to the required precision to have "collision speeds measured in mm/s", the contact interface would need to be perfectly on the center of mass - otherwise any further propulsive maneuvers would cause it to tip to one side. The exterior faces of satellites are really unsuitable for this unless they are specifically designed for this.
> satellites already have a star tracker that includes a capable camera
Which is focused at infinity. Neither the hardware nor the software is capable of tracking a big object nearby and providing feedback to align itself how you're proposing, without significant changes.
Edit: just to give an idea of how difficult docking in space is in general, take a look at the International Docking System Standard (used on the ISS): https://www.internationaldockingstandard.com/
Table 3.3.1.1-2 tells you the conditions for docking; velocities of 50-100mm/s are expected. And look at how much hardware is needed to dampen the energy. It has 6 DoF actuators, hydraulic components, etc. etc. And that's for the ISS - all spacecraft going there are specifically designed to be able to accurately approach and dock with the ISS. There's just no way you can get that level of precision with a satellite bus designed for communications and station keeping.
For instance, if the satellite is dead or has lost propulsion, it will likely have started to spin and will have no way to stop that. Reaction wheels can only do so much and can get saturated, requiring other attitude control systems to be used to desaturate them first. Approaching it with an unspecialized satellite will then definitely generate smaller debris, which is far more problematic.
This also amplifies the risk you mention about ending up immobilized for other reasons. You'd have two pieces of junk literally on top of each other, it would take very little for them to damage each other and start producing much smaller debris.
Further, you can't just repurpose a star tracking camera to look at a satellite instead, they're dealing with completely different kinds of requirements, and it isn't even a given that you would have the processing capability on the tracker to handle the kind of computer vision needed. Nor is it likely that the tracking camera feed can be transmitted down to Earth for manual control.
The only cases we have of a satellite contacting another satellite when it wasn't initially designed with that in mind, involved dedicated extension vehicles designed and launched to dock to the engine nozzle of satellites which were still fully functional and without the extension would've still been able to move themselves into a graveyard orbit.
They don't have that much precision in controlling velocity. Solar panels are fragile. It's a recipe for getting two broken apart satellites in that orbit.
With all of the rockets going into space now, when are we going to really make a strong effort to clean up space? Is it just technical, money, willingness, or...?
Contrary to most of the fear mongering about space debris, kessler syndrome etc, the big Western satellite operators are generally moving in the right direction and have moved faster than regulators to try to set space debris management standards.
Incidents like this one are pretty uncommon, and as space debris goes, this is pretty benign in the sense that it's a large intact satellite and can thus be tracked fairly easily and precisely. Once the technology matures, a cleanup vehicle could even be sent to move it into graveyard orbit.
The kind of space debris that tends to be problematic is stuff that is too small to track, since then you're stuck relying either on pure luck or giving the area a wide berth to not have it hit something else.
> the big Western satellite operators are generally moving in the right direction and have moved faster than regulators to try to set space debris management standards.
We'll see. Starlink/Kuiper use a low enough orbit that non-functional satellites will de-orbit on their own in a reasonable timeframe. But OneWeb, which is up at 1000km+ already has had a satellite failure. And although they've vowed to remove it somehow, it's not obvious how they'll do so.
As far as I'm aware, OneWeb sats have the Astroscale grappling point on them so the vehicle Astroscale is developing can grab and deorbit the dead satellites. The most recent news on that being that an in-orbit demonstration is intended to launch in 2025.
Edit: correction, oneweb doesn't specifically use the astroscale grappling fixture, instead it seems they use either their own design, or ones designed by Altius. Apparently these designs are such that they can be grappled either mechanically or magnetically, so presumably the difference is not significant enough to meaningfully limit which MEV can handle the job.
The vast majority of new satellites are being placed into low earth orbit, which is cleaned up fairly quick by atmospheric drag. You can see this on an animated Gabbard diagram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRUaENzxH44
In higher orbits, particularly GEO (like the satellite in question), it's much more of a problem. Laser brooms might one day be used to deorbit small pieces of debris, but dead satellites beyond LEO will need to be grabbed and tugged/thrown into safer orbits.
Yes, the USSF has as part of it's "SpaceWerx" program a funding initiative called Orbital Prime, which autonomous on-orbit servicing and de-orbiting is a major focus. The summary headline is any private technologies that enable autonomous "RPO" Rendezvous Positioning Operations, will in turn enable activities such as autonomous repair and refueling (one of the main reasons orbital space vehicles reach end of mission is they run out of fuel), and in cases where refueling and repair aren't possible, autonomous "tugs" can dock and execute a deorbit burn for the decommissioned space craft. I was on one of the awarded teams for Orbital Prime last year, its very exciting technology and equally exciting to see serious amounts of funding materializing to tackle this problem.
Instead of a knee-jerk reaction to spending money on a particular solution, think about the problem.
Most things of significant mass are in stable orbits or they wouldn't be there for very long. Regional sats like the one from Dish are in GSO way away, so they don't really matter. The problem is that Dish didn't have a disposal plan for this satellite. It's mostly when operators create clouds of junk, especially fragments from unnecessary collisions that cross other orbits, that pose a threat to lives and property. It's good to require operators to have a deorbit or parking orbit plan.
The biggest threat is LEO-crossing MMOD, which is why crewed craft have hundreds of Whipple shielding configurations to choose from for a given application.
This isn't a problem in need of solving in such a deliberate, costly, and arbitrary manner. Instead, the solutions are holistic: don't create debris that poses a risk to LEO, have a decommissioning plan for GSO objects, and protect what needs protecting by defensive spacecraft design.
Edit: The Kosmos 2251/Iridium 33 collision was reckless operation by the Russians leaving space junk in LEO.
Exactly. Some sort of escrow to guarantee that what goes up will eventually come down. Without that satellite operators could go out of business and dissolve without cleaning up their messes, much like mining companies have historically done.
They put DISH under a consent decree. Despite the low size of the fine, I expect the long term cost to DISH will be enormous. Consent decrees are no joke.
I guess this is great reason to modernize/reboot the SDI [0] initiative (nicknamed Star Wars program from President Reagan days) to clear out bad/rusty/leaky satellites (translate: and anything else they want to take a shot at, in the interests of US national security of course) /s
While still being important, I'd like to draw people's attention to the fact that this is a satellite a long way away from Earth, and is not in any significant danger of causing low Earth orbit to become a no-go area. It's remotely possible that it might cause a problem out at geostationary orbit, but that's very unlikely. There's a lot more space out there and most satellites are all moving in the same direction and at the same speed, making it a lot safer than low Earth orbit.
Honestly this is mostly fair. The fine is small but non-negligible. The infraction here is really the poor propellant tracking which is a mistake, not some nefarious plot or gross negligence. The satellite didn’t quite make the graveyard orbit but it’s out of the way. Tracking in GEO is only getting better, so it’s not really a debris risk. But you do have to issue fines to signal to the industry that getting deorbit plans wrong has a consequence.
I'm probably the only person on HN confused by this comment, but I assume you mean Starlink, not Starling, which is a NASA mission involving 4 cube sats.
None of these concerns apply to Starlink. The satellites orbit low enough to quickly decay if they lose power. They deploy even lower than operational altitude so any associated junk comes down even faster, and the deployment method of just spinning and unlatching the stack, combined with SpaceX's philosophy of using repeatable systems (eg mechanical separators instead of explosive bolts) means that Starlink launches produce minimal debris and any debris produced is short lived.
The issue with the Dish satellite is that it's close to geostationary orbit, which is a limited resource and where the atmospheric drag is low enough that they are essentially up there forever.
By the outer space treaty, ultimately it's the responsibility of the country that the company belongs to. If it was a german operator, it'd be subject to German rules.
Although of course since this is geostationary orbit, the point of putting it over a geographical area is to do business over that area down on Earth.
So, if it was a German company, but was doing business in the US, the US could use access to their market as leverage for a fine.
The geostationary satellites I’m familiar with fly directly over the Equator, no point on the Equator is in Germany. The disposal orbits are geosynchronous and have a more interesting ground track. I think their ground tracks are still equatorial countries.
Geostationary satellites have antennae which are meant to optimize communications with ground stations in certain countries, but they can’t fly over the USA especially.
In that case presumably the other country would be responsible for issuing a penalty, assuming symmetry in a fair world (which is a fairly questionable assumption).
The regulatory vector for satellites in the US is the FCC. The FCC controls US airwaves so if you're providing services via satellite in the US you must have a license from the FCC.
So if you're a non-US company operating services in the US, you'll have to have a US subsidiary anyway and that subsidiary would be required to get the license. If you're a non-US company not doing business in the US then that's outside of regulatory jurisdiction.
This is of course a good thing but should the US have the legal authority to do so? If so, on what grounds? US companies litter all over the place on Earth and don’t get fined. Cruise ships, for example, dump their waste just outside of territorial waters.
I feel like this is charging $50 to a billionaire for leaving wreckage in the middle of a public park.
Like, “we’re warning you!”
But it’s only notable as an action because they haven’t done any prior enforcement. Not because now, suddenly, they are signaling that they’re going to address the problem.
2002 - Dish Network launches EchoStar-7 with a 10 year license from the FCC
2004 - FCC passes new Orbital Debris Mitigation rules, grandfathering existing satellites[1]
2012 - Dish Network applies for a license extension, which includes provisions according to the new rules
2020 - FCC updates debris mitigation rules[2]
2022 - Dish Network notices unexpected fuel loss, and begins moving satellite to graveyard orbit, but only makes it 122km instead of the required 300km.
I had remembered recent press releases about new debris mitigation rules and my first reaction when reading this story was surprise that the FCC was applying the new rules to a satellite launched over 20 years ago, but it appears that is not the case. Dish Network is being fined according to rules that were in place when they requested their license extensions, not the more recent rules.
103 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] threadAdditionally to prevent a company from just going bankrupt they should be required to pay in advance a fee to a fund (ala FDIC) that will deal with issues that have to be dealt with. In this case it may be "ok" but what if this satellite was not out of the active geostationary zone and posed a risk to others important satellites?
Seems like a plan with a bad risk/reward ratio. Right now the satellite isn't where it's supposed to be, but neither is it directly in the way of other geostationary satellites. But if you send up another satellite to deliberately interface with this one and move both up, you risk something going wrong and either getting stuck with two satellites in that position, or worse, both crashing into each other and making a huge mess. It's probably better to wait until the technology for grappling satellites in space is mature. This is presently an active area of research and development (OSAM), so a bit of patience should pay off.
I suppose that in orbit, space has won out over tabs. :-)
(sorry I couldn't help myself)
Maybe read the first line of the parent comment more carefully?
> Not enough, they should be require to fix their mistake by sending out another Satellite to either retrieve it or push it out where it was INDENTED TO BE[emphasis mine].
the error wasn't the typo in `indented`. it was that a single newline ("CR") is like an html space in HN formatting. it doesn't start a new paragraph. GP notes that he only used a single "CR" and thus his own commentary ran together with his intended (also indented, in this case) quote.
Plus, retrieving it is almost guaranteed to be unrealistic. It's out near geostationary orbit. The only options are to have an MEV move it into normal geostationary orbit or dump it into a graveyard orbit.
"Too much! I get sending a message with a small initial fine like 150k plus requiring a compliance plan, but this high amount is a step too far. Prepayment is just the epitome of regulatory capture IMO. Even for selfish reasons a satellite company will strive to keep their satellites minimally functional and safe from any systemic dangers in orbit. But I guess Uncle Sam always has to get his cut."
Space libertarianism here we go!
If you read the consent decree[1] you can see that the monetary fee is not the only thing DISH agreed to.
In section 18 you can see they agreed to implement a compliance plan. Basically they improve on their fuel tracking, and end of mission planning. This makes it more likely that this thing won't happen again, and also makes it easier to argue if it still happens that it happened wilfully.
1: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-23-888A2.pdf
> Wouldn't they have also implemented a compliance program if they were fined 10% of revenue, you know to avoid future fines?
They would have spent up to 10% of revenue on lawyers and lobbying to get out of the fine entirely and thereby have no fear of another one.
But 10% of their revenue is $1.7B. It would cost them almost a decade's worth of profit, so that's how much they'd spend to prevent it, which is plenty enough to influence legislation. "Percent of revenue" fines are dumb and create crazy incentives.
If they couldn't be bothered to put enough fuel in the cannister to deorbit, they get fined. I don't see why that requires a full trial.
Is the theory that the company is going to ignore this? That seems implausible; I'm guessing that they're scrambling to avoid further problems and make sure the relationship with their regulator is good. From the regulator's perspetive, what benefit would it do to actually put them out of business, or to seriously wound them, or scare them more? Or, are we trying to establish a precedent that "you may be seriously damaged even upon first infraction"? Is that the behavior we want companies to anticipate - that the government will attack super hard upon first infraction? If that's what we want, okay. But to me that seems too strong, since there are tons of laws and rules with arbitrary enforcement; given that it makes sense that when agencies get involved, they initially fire warning shots like this so companies know someone is paying attention. Then in a month, if the company hasn't taken serious steps to solve this, the regulators can start nuking companies who don't comply. I'm definitely pro regulation, but there's a trade-off because companies need to know the rules so they can plan, budget, consult, etc. so having this initial trigger that working to figure out what is allowed/forbidden/etc is good. Companies pre-emptively being extremely scared will have huge costs (money/environmental/speed), too, especially when it's for things which don't matter or which agencies don't actually care about.
While I agree at you that this isnt the adtech buisness staffed by ghouls that see fines as a cost of doing buisness, the idea of adding to space debris is rightfully met with horror, so any amount of money short of compoany-ending will be seen as people getting off lightly
Companies do have a choice in many cases, so being super aggro against them isn't really beneficial. If they can be reined in by threats+negotiation, while still doing business here (within our oversight) it seems ideal.
Please don't assume that by discussing the appropriate level of initial fine in an interaction between a company and a regulatory agency, that I'm saying government doesn't have a role here. That does not follow at all.
I'm more questioning the presumption in this comment section that the regulator should have been harsher to start with.
To me it seems natural that a referee in an interaction will start off gently saying "hey, I'm paying attention to this issue now, here's a minor fine, but watch out" so the players know to care. If they continue misbehaving, they'll start being thrown out of the game.
But saying that the ref should start off his first enforcement with seriously damaging penalties doesn't seem reasonable. Nearly every sport in practice involves a gap between the rules "as written" and the rules as "as enforced" - i.e. fouling, traveling in the NBA, strike zone in MLB. In all of these cases, players need 1) knowledge of what's going on in this game and 2) consistency from the ref so they can adjust and not be outplayed.
Why don't refs always enforce rules to the max? To me this is a key aspect of human systems, the human freedom of refs as people to adjust to make things work well, especially when the rules as written are insane or incorrect, and are extremely hard to change upstream (due to government/publicity/etc) problems, in addition to just plain incompetence in congress.
i.e. "The NBA won't redefine the traveling rule to reflect reality, but refs enforce the 'real' rule which is used on playgrounds, and everyone knows the level of enforcement that will be used in each situation, even though refs never actually write it down."
You may want an exact match between rules/laws & enforcement, but it doesn't work that way with human referees. Same thing here. Enforcement is a kind of communication and negotiation between parties; starting off by nuking the company will scare them so badly, others will abandon the space or the US due to the harshness. Also, the discussions that come out of this will be things like "what's an efficient way for the company to do what the agency wants? Keep in mind our restrictions here (e.g. every rocket launch also has some harm/risk to your priorities; is there a way we can help all of our concerns from within the multiple ways to solve this issue?)"
I understand the impetus to make the story about liberty, but this is not a "new government entity" "suddenly" appearing. Dish is in the business of satellite communications. That field is strictly regulated by the FCC. The company applied for permission before launch, then later applied permission to modify their authorisation, and they themselves reported the discrepancy at the end of mission.
There is nothing "sudden" about this.
> Was there even a trial?
No. There wasn't. To quote from the consent decree: "The Company and the Bureau subsequently engaged in settlement negotiations. To resolve this matter, the Company and the Bureau enter into this Consent Decree and agree to the following terms and conditions." That is to say this is a settlement.
> Or did some guys get together in a room and decide you should just pay them,
Yes. Some "guys" from the bureau and some from the company got together in a room.
> without any consultation?
No. The representatives of the company were in the room. The general counsel of the company signed the consent decree.
This. There are other compliance conditions, and failure to comply means no more launch licenses.
There are some places where this doesn't seem to operate very well, particularly in the financial world, but in general, this is often the idea behind these penalties. Especially for the first time a law is getting enforced; it isn't really very just to ignore a law for years/decades and then one day out of the blue slam someone with multi-million dollar judgments. There are even some Common Law doctrines that the targets could use to argue against such penalties holding up in court, though, as always, trying to counter a written law with common law general doctrines is tricky. But I'd say there's at least a good chance you could get a sudden, huge initial penalty argued way down in a lawsuit.
And OK, let's say they keep getting fined. Seems like a badge of honor these days. Move fast and break things, right? The government just doesn't like, get us, man. We're the good guys here and they're trying to slow us down with red tape and bureaucracy.
If you have several choices and one is getting sanctioned for shitty practices, maybe you’ll look elsewhere.
Saying you’re a rocket engineer sounds pretty neat, but the shine wears off a bit if people recognise your employer for negative reasons.
Which is what Tesla is experiencing at the moment in their facility Grünheide [1]... a toxic mixture of low wages, bad employment conditions, and reports about unsafe practices.
[1] https://t3n.de/news/tesla-gruenheide-personalmangel-und-ange...
I agree with the sentiment that the reputation hit is imaginary, and really only serves to prevent stiffer fines.
Actually, they shouldn't be charged a fine, instead, they should have to go and get it back.
[1] https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/#bottom
Curious. Willing to bet some of these regulators kids end up at Dish over the next few years.
In reference to your previous question, along with the obvious brute fact of the fines not escalating for the same infraction over time, I would take a first stab at an answer being that the stronger the "revolving door" the less likely the fines are to be serious.
Note that just a one way industry -> regulator won't necessarily produce this effect, because in that situation a regulator can still want to flex by producing meaningful fines. But the more the cycle is industry -> regulator -> and back to industry, the more the regulator is going to be thinking in terms of what will come around when they're in the industry again.
Now, most probably nothing is out there waiting to get run over by a derelict Dish bird, but if there was...
The orbit it is in is perfectly between geostationary and the disposal orbit. That means any other satellite who is travelling from one orbit to the other can stop off on-route for no fuel or time cost.
'grabbing' a satellite is fairly easy too. Even a fridge magnet would be enough to grab this satellite - since even tiny forces over many hours are enough in space.
I therefore suspect that it would be possible to complete this disposal with a satellite already on orbit - ie. not specially designed for the purpose, and using very little additional fuel - perhaps some operational satellites even have enough extra in reserve.
Damage is unlikely - collision speeds would be measured in millimeters per second, and forces in millinewtons.
For position accuracy, it would probably require a camera onboard - but most satellites already have a star tracker that includes a capable camera.
The main risk is that the satellites touch at the 'wrong angle' or blocking an attitude control thruster. That would immobilize both of them.
> collision speeds would be measured in millimeters per second, and forces in millinewtons.
What satellite ending their end of life, and already in orbit do you suggest are capable of such delicate manoeuvring? This is a very delicate task you are describing, and most satellites are simply not designed for it.
> The main risk is that the satellites touch at the 'wrong angle' or blocking an attitude control thruster.
If someone tries this, the most likely outcome is that the satelites wizz by each other without ever touching. If you somehow manage to aim the "pushing" satellite accurately enough at the "stranded" satellite they would most likely collide at anything from a few hundred meter/s to a few of km/s depending on the orbital arrangements.
As a result I think you're misunderstanding what the orbital dynamics would be.
I do understand what geostationary orbit is.
The commenter I was responding to said "any other satellite who is travelling from one orbit to the other can stop off on-route for no fuel or time cost". If they wanted to only talk about geo sats they should have said that.
But sure, let's think about using a geo sat to fly this intercept. Let's just pick Echostar-8 as a concrete example. It is at 6.4 degree inclination while Echostart-7 is at 1.5 degree. So you will at best have a glancing blow between these two.
https://www.satnow.com/products/thrusters/space-electric-thr...
It has a thrust of ~20 milli Newtons.
Power that up for 10 seconds on a satellite weighing 500 kg, and you will move an extra 0.4 millimeters per second.
So how exactly is precise maneuvering hard?
For example, the satellite bus used by EchoStar-7, which is the satellite in question here (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_A2100) uses Hydrazine and NTO for primary propulsion, with hydrazine monoprop for atittude control, and the monoprop thrusters and ion thrusters for station keeping.
While the new version of that bus has the option for all-electric propulsion, it really isn't clear how popular that option has actually been. There aren't really many details about it.
Define "typical" because it's not being used on any geostationary satellites.
> Power that up for 10 seconds on a satellite weighing 500 kg
500kg? Hilarious. These satellites are the size of a bus and their weights are measured in tons.
> satellites already have a star tracker that includes a capable camera
Which is focused at infinity. Neither the hardware nor the software is capable of tracking a big object nearby and providing feedback to align itself how you're proposing, without significant changes.
Edit: just to give an idea of how difficult docking in space is in general, take a look at the International Docking System Standard (used on the ISS): https://www.internationaldockingstandard.com/
Table 3.3.1.1-2 tells you the conditions for docking; velocities of 50-100mm/s are expected. And look at how much hardware is needed to dampen the energy. It has 6 DoF actuators, hydraulic components, etc. etc. And that's for the ISS - all spacecraft going there are specifically designed to be able to accurately approach and dock with the ISS. There's just no way you can get that level of precision with a satellite bus designed for communications and station keeping.
For instance, if the satellite is dead or has lost propulsion, it will likely have started to spin and will have no way to stop that. Reaction wheels can only do so much and can get saturated, requiring other attitude control systems to be used to desaturate them first. Approaching it with an unspecialized satellite will then definitely generate smaller debris, which is far more problematic.
This also amplifies the risk you mention about ending up immobilized for other reasons. You'd have two pieces of junk literally on top of each other, it would take very little for them to damage each other and start producing much smaller debris.
Further, you can't just repurpose a star tracking camera to look at a satellite instead, they're dealing with completely different kinds of requirements, and it isn't even a given that you would have the processing capability on the tracker to handle the kind of computer vision needed. Nor is it likely that the tracking camera feed can be transmitted down to Earth for manual control.
The only cases we have of a satellite contacting another satellite when it wasn't initially designed with that in mind, involved dedicated extension vehicles designed and launched to dock to the engine nozzle of satellites which were still fully functional and without the extension would've still been able to move themselves into a graveyard orbit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37744077
Incidents like this one are pretty uncommon, and as space debris goes, this is pretty benign in the sense that it's a large intact satellite and can thus be tracked fairly easily and precisely. Once the technology matures, a cleanup vehicle could even be sent to move it into graveyard orbit.
The kind of space debris that tends to be problematic is stuff that is too small to track, since then you're stuck relying either on pure luck or giving the area a wide berth to not have it hit something else.
We'll see. Starlink/Kuiper use a low enough orbit that non-functional satellites will de-orbit on their own in a reasonable timeframe. But OneWeb, which is up at 1000km+ already has had a satellite failure. And although they've vowed to remove it somehow, it's not obvious how they'll do so.
Edit: correction, oneweb doesn't specifically use the astroscale grappling fixture, instead it seems they use either their own design, or ones designed by Altius. Apparently these designs are such that they can be grappled either mechanically or magnetically, so presumably the difference is not significant enough to meaningfully limit which MEV can handle the job.
In higher orbits, particularly GEO (like the satellite in question), it's much more of a problem. Laser brooms might one day be used to deorbit small pieces of debris, but dead satellites beyond LEO will need to be grabbed and tugged/thrown into safer orbits.
Most things of significant mass are in stable orbits or they wouldn't be there for very long. Regional sats like the one from Dish are in GSO way away, so they don't really matter. The problem is that Dish didn't have a disposal plan for this satellite. It's mostly when operators create clouds of junk, especially fragments from unnecessary collisions that cross other orbits, that pose a threat to lives and property. It's good to require operators to have a deorbit or parking orbit plan.
The biggest threat is LEO-crossing MMOD, which is why crewed craft have hundreds of Whipple shielding configurations to choose from for a given application.
This isn't a problem in need of solving in such a deliberate, costly, and arbitrary manner. Instead, the solutions are holistic: don't create debris that poses a risk to LEO, have a decommissioning plan for GSO objects, and protect what needs protecting by defensive spacecraft design.
Edit: The Kosmos 2251/Iridium 33 collision was reckless operation by the Russians leaving space junk in LEO.
Just asking this tech focused community, but shouldn't the correct action be for a UN level entity charge an automatic de-orbiting fee.
Even thinking it as a bottle deposit return if the launching company succeeds in its de-orbit burnup for ongoing constellations.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
The issue with the Dish satellite is that it's close to geostationary orbit, which is a limited resource and where the atmospheric drag is low enough that they are essentially up there forever.
Although of course since this is geostationary orbit, the point of putting it over a geographical area is to do business over that area down on Earth.
So, if it was a German company, but was doing business in the US, the US could use access to their market as leverage for a fine.
Geostationary satellites have antennae which are meant to optimize communications with ground stations in certain countries, but they can’t fly over the USA especially.
So if you're a non-US company operating services in the US, you'll have to have a US subsidiary anyway and that subsidiary would be required to get the license. If you're a non-US company not doing business in the US then that's outside of regulatory jurisdiction.
In at least 1 case, they also issued fines to a US company that tried to use an international launch to circumvent US rules
Like, “we’re warning you!”
But it’s only notable as an action because they haven’t done any prior enforcement. Not because now, suddenly, they are signaling that they’re going to address the problem.
2002 - Dish Network launches EchoStar-7 with a 10 year license from the FCC
2004 - FCC passes new Orbital Debris Mitigation rules, grandfathering existing satellites[1]
2012 - Dish Network applies for a license extension, which includes provisions according to the new rules
2020 - FCC updates debris mitigation rules[2]
2022 - Dish Network notices unexpected fuel loss, and begins moving satellite to graveyard orbit, but only makes it 122km instead of the required 300km.
2022 - FCC updates debris mitigation rules again[3]
I had remembered recent press releases about new debris mitigation rules and my first reaction when reading this story was surprise that the FCC was applying the new rules to a satellite launched over 20 years ago, but it appears that is not the case. Dish Network is being fined according to rules that were in place when they requested their license extensions, not the more recent rules.
[1] https://www.fcc.gov/document/mitigration-orbital-debris
[2] https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-updates-orbital-debris-miti...
[3] https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-new-5-year-rule-deor...
It almost seems like we need some ion drive cleanup tugs in orbit. Mayb they could reclaim reaction mass gradually from the solar wind.