EuroWire May 2019

Transatlantic cable

Europe has invested billions in its Galileo global positioning satellites, partly to ensure it is not dependent on US systems, but it still relies on the US military to track “…the hardest-to-spot threats in space.” “Europe needs to be able to analyse what is happening in orbit [for] itself,” said Reiter, adding that billions must be spent on a radar system to achieve this. For now, the threat from thousands of dead satellites that continue to circle the planet is manageable, since they are relatively large and easy to track. Far more dangerous are an estimated 900,000 particles of over a centimetre in size, and 130 million that are over a millimetre. Travelling at high speed, a particle can cause severe damage to satellites, or even destroy them, and so disrupt communications for millions of users. Reiter said more needs to be done to clear space debris, including guiding defunct satellites into orbits that will bring them into Earth’s atmosphere to burn up – a project that would cost, he believes, “some €200 million over three years.” Russia leans to Luxembourg in space mining Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova has confirmed the country’s desire to join Luxembourg in mining for minerals in outer space. The Duchy of Luxembourg was the first country to adopt legal regulations relating to mining in space, including from asteroids. Metals such as iron, cobalt and nickel are abundant in asteroids, and are critical components of space vehicles, while platinum group metals, also abundant, can be used for internal circuitry and electronics. Commercial mining on other planets or asteroids is still a distant prospect, hampered, in part, by the technical challenges of transporting large quantities of mined minerals back to Earth. Vladimir Soldatkin, reporting for Reuters , wrote: “The focus of entrepreneurs pursuing space mining is instead on using space minerals to create interplanetary “gas stations” that will build, support and fuel colonies on Mars.” Space law is dominated by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, written and ratified at the time of the Cold War and therefore heavy on the prohibition of weapons of mass destruction in space, on the Moon, or on any other celestial body. The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource, such as the Moon or a planet, on the basis that they are “the common heritage of Mankind.” Luxembourg has said it is “eager to work with other countries” on a multilateral agreement on asteroid rights. Gill Watson Features Editor

Telephone companies continued to lose customers, making it four years in a row, though the losses appear to have slowed: just 470,000 in 2018, compared to 620,000 the year before. Finally, cable’s broadband market share reached its highest level since the third quarter of 2003: cable had a 65 per cent market share in 2018, with telephone companies taking 35 per cent.

Space Industry

Brazil and USA in accord over space technology

In mid-March, Reuters revealed that the United States and Brazil have negotiated an accord on space technology. “Negotiations are being concluded with a view to signing an agreement during the presidential visit to Washington,” a Brazilian foreign ministry official confirmed. Brazil hopes to interest US companies in launching small satellites at lower cost from the Brazilian Air Force’s Alcantara base, on the country’s north coast. Because of its location close to the equator, launches from Alcantara burn 30 per cent less fuel, and rockets can carry larger payloads, though the Air Force has said that Brazil is looking to the micro-satellite niche market. The Alcantara space centre is especially attractive to smaller firms, such as the Arizona-based rocket maker Vector Launch Inc, because of its location. Space cooperation between the United States and Brazil took a big step forward when they signed a space situational awareness (SSA) agreement in 2018, during a visit to Brasilia by former US Defense secretary James Mattis. The accord on sharing real-time tracking data on objects and debris in space is needed to develop a satellite launching business without the risk of collision. A previous attempt at a USA-Brazil space partnership came to grief in 2003, when a technology safeguard agreement (TSA) was resisted by the government of former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and by Brazilian lawmakers who found US unverified access to the base unacceptable on sovereignty grounds. Space junk is spreading, warns ESA adviser A senior adviser to the European Space Agency (ESA) believes Europe needs its own technology to guard against a growing threat to its satellites from “space junk”, ranging from tiny particles to entire defunct satellites. With the world increasingly reliant on orbital infrastructure to maintain communications links and steer autonomous vehicles, scientists warn that the danger posed by debris in orbit has grown exponentially. “We are getting around 100 alarms a day about approaching particles,” said Thomas Reiter, an adviser to the ESA. “Every two weeks, a satellite has to dodge something.”

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May 2019