Kuiper Orbital Debris Plan Gets Pushback
The updated orbital debris mitigation plan of Amazon's Kuiper got criticisms and suggested conditions from other satellite operators, in FCC International Bureau in comments this week. Kuiper still hasn't evaluated the space safety risks of its planned operations and hasn't…
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identified strategies for mitigating those risks, Viasat said. Unaddressed issues include evaluating aggregate Kuiper collision risks and providing information about the basic physical characteristics of each Kuiper satellite. It said the mitigation strategies Kuiper identifies are inadequate. It urged the application be held in abeyance. "There is no reasonable basis upon which the Commission could approve Kuiper’s application; the public interest does not permit the Commission to endanger space safety while Kuiper 'figures it out,'" Viasat said. SpaceX said Kuiper leaves "serious questions" about its ability to operate safely, often seemingly shifting the burden of safe operation to other systems. It said before FCC processing of its application, Kuiper should make clear how it intends to safely do its proposed elliptical deorbits, and provide more detail about how its satellites avoid collision during orbit raising. Kepler said that similar to the FCC conditioning one of its SpaceX approvals on SpaceX having a smaller orbital tolerance in the upper latitude ranges because of its overlap with another system, the agency should require Kuiper to maintain a 10 km distance from Kepler orbits.