Plus: The new moon race is too dangerous
| By Dan Robitzski
Welcome back to our weekly newsletter highlighting the opinions and perspectives of the SpaceNews community.
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Last month, the White House released a new executive order on space policy, and one sentence in particular has caused an uproar in the space community: no longer is the United States government required to provide space situational awareness data and space traffic management service for free. Our latest commentary on the matter comes from Audrey Schaffer, the senior vice president of global policy and government strategy at Slingshot Aerospace who had a 15-plus-year tenure as a civil servant focused on space policy.
Schaffer wrote that it's high time spacecraft operators start pitching in rather than benefitting from services paid exclusively through tax dollars. And while government services shouldn't be disassembled overnight, she argued that "continuing to leverage this infrastructure to provide free space traffic coordination services to any operator will become increasingly untenable as the number of satellites grows exponentially."
"Wholly disestablishing a U.S. government civil space traffic coordination system just as TraCSS becomes operational is unwise, but making operators contribute to funding space safety services is smart and fiscally responsible policy," Schaffer wrote.
You can read the rest of her argument here. | | | | |
Is NASA rushing a return to the moon before solving the critical technological and human safety risks involved in establishing a long-term presence there — something the United States government is particularly interested in doing before China?
Science writer and journalist Dennis Meredith argues that the answer is a resounding yes. In his recent opinion article, Meredith laid out a long list of logistical challenges and health risks that NASA has identified but not yet solved. As Meredith wrote, he "hope[s] that the tenure of Jared Isaacman will bring an energized NASA and produce the wise long-term planning and sufficient funding needed to tackle them."
On the list of these "red risks" are health issues such as the effects of cosmic radiation, degraded vision, cognitive decline and deficient food and nutrition, as well as logistical challenges such as dealing with lunar dust (which, Meredith wrote, can causes health issues in its own right), and establishing proper infrastructure on the moon to support landing, launch and habitation.
You can see the rest of the article here. | | | | | |  | | Illustration representing NASA's moon-to-Mars ambitions. Credit: NASA
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