The Office of Inspector General within the Department of Commerce has recommended revising the Office of Space Commerce’s processes to speed up development of the Traffic Coordination System for Space—a.k.a. TraCSS—capability, Breaking Defense reported Tuesday.
Under Space Policy Directive-3, National Space Traffic Management Policy issued in June 2018, the Commerce Department is mandated to assume the responsibility to provide space situational awareness data to commercial, civil and foreign entities—an activity currently performed by the Department of Defense.
The OSC, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is developing the TraCSS to monitor space objects and provide notifications of potential conjunctions to civil and commercial space operators.
The IG, however, found that the OSC is behind schedule in providing basic space situational awareness data and services and a new approach to space traffic management is not yet defined and remains a distant goal.
In its report published in July, the IG urged the OSC to revise the TraCSS program timeline using agile best practices to include realistic dates, capabilities and actual progress; develop and communicate a plan to ensure stakeholders stay informed of changes to the TraCSS timeline; modify the TraCSS staffing plan to include roles, responsibilities and priority for each position and strategies for attrition management; define and document OSC’s approach for STM-related responsibilities in the near- and long-terms to address current and future operational risks; and develop and regularly update a plan to implement OSC’s approach to fulfilling the department’s STM-related responsibilities set in SPD-3.
In response to the report, NOAA concurred with the first three recommendations but did not concur with the fourth recommendation and only partially concurred with the fifth recommendation.
The report indicated that further delay in the OSC’s TraCSS program could result in a service gap for space operators.