The amount of data collected on space assets is growing exponentially. This is critical for Space Traffic Management as LEO especially becomes more congested. Traditionally the DoD has collected, analyzed and disseminated the data required to do effective STM. With more and more commercial space users coming onto the scene there is increased interest in the STM data. Especially data that is complete. When managed by the DoD there is a high amount of interest in censoring the data to prevent adversaries from obtaining critical information on U.S. assets or combining large amounts of unclassified data into a classified product.

Both the DoD and commerce departments are trying to work together on a method for sharing this STM data between defense and commercial entities. As commercial entities start to collect more and higher quality STM data this data can become a useful addition to the data collected by the DoD.

There are several concerns with data sharing. The first is data integrity. If data is being shared widely and different data sources are contributing to large databases this provides opportunities for those with malicious intent to modify or spoof data that is being used for critical decisions such as collision avoidance. The next is unauthorized access. The more data that is shared the higher the probability of unauthorized individuals from gaining access to data.

Hitchens, T. (2022, September 26). EXCLUSIVE: DoD-Commerce yet to hash out review of commercial space data sharing. Retrieved from Breaking Defense: https://breakingdefense.com/2022/09/exclusive-dod-commerce-yet-to-hash-out-review-of-commercial-space-data-sharing/