A North American company has been sanctioned with a fine of 150 thousand dollars, by the United States government, for incidents with space debris. What did they do differently from the hundreds of companies or space agencies that do the same? Why does this corporation receive punishment and the others have years of impunity? A statement explains everything.
Space debris is a real problem, one that the world’s space agencies and governments want to address. Tons of debris from probes and satellites are in the orbit of our planet.
However, it has never been seen that a company was fined for this situation. What the statement from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) argues is that they are punishing Dish Network (communication services provider) for having left a satellite in a very low area of the world’s orbit.
Specifically, the FCC says, the company would have violated something called the “satellite relocation law” with its EchoStar-7. The company launched the satellite in 2002 and when it stopped working, in May 2022, they realized that it did not have fuel to move it about 300 kilometers above where it carried out operations, he reported. Hypertextual.
They left it at a height of 122 kilometers from where it was before, in a region where it could collide with other similar probes. “We must ensure that operators comply with their commitments,” says the head of the FCC Compliance Office, Loyaan Egal, in reference to the fact that there are more and more satellites and the traffic of machines increases in Earth’s orbit.
The company did not object, it accepted and paid the fine. “It makes it very clear that the FCC has strong enforcement authority and the ability to enforce its space debris rules, which are of vital importance,” highlights Egal as director of this regulatory body.