SSA Data Sharing Could Push Global Space Norms: Aerospace

International sharing of space situational awareness (SSA) data would help with space safety and sustainability, but it also could help lead to voluntary norms of responsible space behavior by allowing countries to assess how each other are adhering to voluntary space norms, Aerospace said in a paper Tuesday. In it, author Michael Gleason, Aerospace's Center for Space Policy and Strategy national security senior project engineer, argues the U.S. shouldn't care as much about sharing SSA data with China or Russia, which have independent capabilities to confirm responsible space behavior; instead an international SSA data sharing framework should focus on other nations and other U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space members. That would "maximize the chances of generating a critical mass of support for a space norm and stimulating a norm cascade," he said. Gleason said a verification framework using SSA data from multiple sources including the nascent Open Architecture Data Repository and SpaceTrack.org, the EU Space Surveillance and Tracking consortium, and civil society, commercial SSA and other entities "should promote buy-in for space norms among a wide swath of countries and enable space norms to become accepted by the majority of countries around the world."