As part of the rolling propaganda and strive to be seen party at the 38th Space Symposium, Deputy Commerce Seceretary Don Graves spoke to how his department will continue to support the industrial complex and the growing space economy.
He outlined 5 areas of focus:
- Coordinating regulatory functions: creating a framework for ramework that promotes responsible private enterprise in space that is capable of evolving in response to technological inovation.
- Growing the customer base for U.S. commercial space goods and services making investments that will promote the availability and resilience of the space-related industrial base and supply chains
- Improving space safety and sustainability; DOC will be taking responsibility over providing space situationalSSA data and services to commercial and civil space operators. The system will be called TraCSS – the Traffic Coordination System for Space
- Promoting commercial space innovation – spectrum availability, global navigation satellite system radio occultation, ionospheric measurements programs for test and evaluation, and commitment to intellectual property protection.
- Advancing Earth observation capabilities to empower better decision making by public and private sectors. Promoting NOAA’s future architecture to develop a more advanced and agile architecture in Low Earth Orbit and for space weather.
After explaining the details of the Department’s focus areas, Graves stated the importance of space cybersecurity to protectethe enviorbment. The department is leaning on the National Insitute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to define its policy guidelines. Two highly anticipated policy documents are an update to the Cybersecurity Framework (applied to four space systems: Position, navigation, and timing systems; commercial satellite operations; satellite ground segments; and hybrid networks) and “Introduction to Cybersecurity for Commercial Satellite Operations.” He did not go into detail about the policies but just thinking on the titles provides fertile ground for possible areas fro cybersecurity to rise in importance from a polcy perspective.