12/20/2025

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By Dan Robitzski

Welcome back to our weekly newsletter highlighting the opinions and perspectives of the SpaceNews community.

What problem is charging for Space Situational Awareness supposed to solve?

An executive order issued Dec. 18 suggests that the U.S. government could charge for Space Situational Awareness (SSA) services.

Writing in to make sense of the announcement is Richard DalBello, former director of the Office of Space Commerce, which has been responsible for getting Traffic Coordination System for Space off the ground.

DalBello suggests three reasons the White House may have for charging for SSA data, including conjunction warnings: cost recovery, market forcing and deliberate ambiguity on the governments role as a provider of baseline SSA services.

The fact that the White House's aims aren't clear, though, clouds the situation, Dalbello wrote.

"The problem is not that one of these approaches is inherently illegitimate. Reasonable people can disagree about the proper balance between public infrastructure and private provision. The problem is that charging means very different things under each model. Without clarity, it risks achieving none of the intended outcomes: insufficient revenue to sustain government services, insufficient trust to support commercial adoption and increased operational risk in the meantime."

See the rest of the article here.

Bellwethers for space exploration in 2026

After the year NASA had, it can be hard to predict what will come next for its various scientific research missions and facilities. Former NASA Ames Research Center Director Scott Hubbard and University of Colorado Boulder and University of Washington professor emeritus Bruce Jakosky wrote an article describing what signs they're looking for and what they might mean for NASA's future.

Check out their commentary here to see their bellwethers for the Artemis program as well as lunar, Mars, climate and other science endeavors.

The January 2026 issue of SpaceNews Magazine will include this article as well as more than 10 other commentaries written by space experts who make their recommendations and predictions for what 2026 will hold for the civil, military and commercial aspects of space. Make sure you get your copy!

The Pentagon building. Credit: U.S. Army

Congress' SBIR standoff is slowing Space Force innovation — it must act now

In order to accelerate the Space Force's technological innovation, Congress needs to fund the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, argued Brent Page, western region vice president of the Space Force Association.

The current funding lapse in SBIR and STTR means that the Space Force's ability to award contracts to businesses quickly developing new technological capabilities is on hold, Page wrote.

As he put it, "Congress can fix this quickly by reauthorizing these programs and giving innovators the certainty they need to continue strengthening America's edge in space. The alternative is to hand pause and possibly advantage to our strategic competitors."

See the rest of the article here.

SpaceNews is committed to publishing our community's diverse perspectives. Whether you're an academic, executive, engineer or even just a concerned citizen of the cosmos, send your arguments and viewpoints to opinion (at) spacenews.com to be considered for publication online or in our next magazine. If you have something to submit, read some of our recent opinion articles and our submission guidelines to get a sense of what we're looking for. The perspectives shared in these opinion articles are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent their employers or professional affiliations.

FROM SPACENEWS

Listen to a panel discussion from Spacepower on the latest episode of Space Minds

Speed, risk, and the future of national security space: In this episode of Space Minds, host Mike Gruss moderates a panel discussion at the Spacepower conference on how commercial space capabilities are reshaping national security, civil space and military decision-making with Luke Fischer, CEO and co-founder of SkyFi, Bob Pavelko, executive director of national security space programs for Intuitive Machines, and Bradley Cheetham, CEO and co-founder of Advanced Space. Watch or listen now.

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