    [House Hearing, 115 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                             [H.A.S.C. No. 115-113]

                          SPACE SITUATIONAL AWARENESS:

         WHOLE OF GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVES ON ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

                                   __________

                                 JOINT HEARING

                                   before the

                        SUBCOMMITTEE ON STRATEGIC FORCES

                                     of the

                          COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

                              meeting jointly with

                             SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE

                                     of the

                  COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

                              [Serial No. 115-66]

                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                         ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                                  HEARING HELD

                                 JUNE 22, 2018

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

     33-386                  WASHINGTON : 2019

                          COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
                        SUBCOMMITTEE ON STRATEGIC FORCES

                         MIKE ROGERS, Alabama, Chairman

    DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado               JIM COOPER, Tennessee
    DUNCAN HUNTER, California            SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
    MO BROOKS, Alabama                   RICK LARSEN, Washington
    MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio              JOHN GARAMENDI, California
    MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado               BETO O'ROURKE, Texas
    BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama               DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey
    SAM GRAVES, Missouri                 COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
    JODY B. HICE, Georgia                RO KHANNA, California
    PAUL MITCHELL, Michigan
                    Sarah Mineiro, Professional Staff Member
                             Leonor Tomero, Counsel
                             Michael Gancio, Clerk
                                     ------
                  COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

                       HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair

    FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma             EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
    DANA ROHRABACHER, California         ZOE LOFGREN, California
    MO BROOKS, Alabama                   DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
    RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois             SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
    BILL POSEY, Florida                  AMI BERA, California
    THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky              ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
    RANDY K. WEBER, Texas                MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
    STEPHEN KNIGHT, California           DONALD S. BEYER, Jr., Virginia
    BRIAN BABIN, Texas                   JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
    BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia           CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania
    BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia            JERRY McNERNEY, California
    RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana         ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
    GARY PALMER, Alabama                 PAUL TONKO, New York
    DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida              BILL FOSTER, Illinois
    ANDY BIGGS, Arizona                  MARK TAKANO, California
    ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas            COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
    NEAL P. DUNN, Florida                CHARLIE CRIST, Florida
    CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana
    RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
    DEBBIE LESKO, Arizona
                                     ------

                             SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE

                         HON. BRIAN BABIN, Texas, Chair

    DANA ROHRABACHER, California         AMI BERA, California, Ranking
    FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma                 Member
    MO BROOKS, Alabama                   ZOE LOFGREN, California
    RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois             DONALD S. BEYER, Jr., Virginia
    BILL POSEY, Florida                  MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
    STEPHEN KNIGHT, California           DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
    BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia           ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
    RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana         CHARLIE CRIST, Florida
    DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida              BILL FOSTER, Illinois
    ANDY BIGGS, Arizona                  CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania
    NEAL P. DUNN, Florida                EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
    CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana
    LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page

                  STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

    Rogers, Hon. Mike, a Representative from Alabama, Chairman,
      Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Committee on Armed Services..     1

                                   WITNESSES

    Bridenstine, Hon. James F., Administrator, National Aeronautics
      and Space Administration.......................................     2
    Hyten, Gen John E., USAF, Commander, United States Strategic
      Command........................................................     1
    Ross, Hon. Wilbur, Secretary of Commerce.........................     3

                                    APPENDIX

    Prepared Statements:

        Bridenstine, Hon. James F....................................    69
        Babin, Hon. Brian, a Representative from Texas, Chairman,
          Subcommittee on Space, Committee on Science, Space, and
          Technology.................................................    54
        Hyten, Gen John E............................................    59
        Ross, Hon. Wilbur............................................    76
        Smith, Hon. Lamar, a Representative from Texas, Chairman,
          Committee on Science, Space, and Technology................    49

    Documents Submitted for the Record:

        [There were no Documents submitted.]

    Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:

        [There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]

    Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:

        Mr. Coffman..................................................    83
        Mr. Hunter...................................................    84
        Mr. Mitchell.................................................    85

                          SPACE SITUATIONAL AWARENESS:

                        WHOLE OF GOVERNMENT PERSPECTIVES

                         ON ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

                                  ----------

            House of Representatives, Committee on Armed
                Services, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces,
                Meeting Jointly with the Committee on Science,
                Space, and Technology, Subcommittee on Space,
                Washington, DC, Friday, June 22, 2018.

        The subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 9:01 a.m., in
    room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mike Rogers
    (chairman of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces) presiding.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE ROGERS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
          ALABAMA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON STRATEGIC FORCES

        Mr. Rogers. Good morning. I want to thank Chairman Babin
    and Ranking Member Bera for their interest and cooperation in
    organizing this joint hearing to discuss space situational
    awareness in a whole of government context.
        I also appreciate the interest expressed by members of the
    House Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Science,
    Space, and Technology more broadly, and, therefore, ask
    unanimous consent that non-subcommittee members be allowed to
    participate in today's hearing after all subcommittee members
    have had an opportunity to ask questions. Is there objection?
        Hearing none, so ordered.
        Non-subcommittee members will be recognized at the
    appropriate time for 5 minutes.
        Given that we have an excellent panel of witnesses and lots
    of member interest, I will ask unanimous consent to include
    into the record all member statements and extraneous material.
        Without objection, so ordered.
        Today we will hear from an excellent panel of witnesses on
    SSA [space situational awareness], including the Honorable
    Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce; the Honorable Jim
    Bridenstine, no stranger to this room or this subject matter,
    Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration;
    and another person who is no stranger to this room, General
    John Hyten, Commander, United States Strategic Command.
        I will turn it over to you for your brief opening
    statements and then we will roll straight into questions.
        General Hyten, start with you.

    STATEMENT OF GEN JOHN E. HYTEN, USAF, COMMANDER, UNITED STATES
                           STRATEGIC COMMAND

        General Hyten. Thank you, Chairman Rogers, Babin, Smith,
    the three chairmen, Ranking Members Cooper, Bera, Johnson,
    distinguished committee members, all of you. It is an honor to
    be here today with Secretary Ross and Administrator
    Bridenstine. It is kind of difficult not to say Congressman
    Bridenstine, but he is on this side of the table, which is
    interesting.
        So it is always a privilege to be here, and it is a
    privilege to represent the 162,000 Americans that accomplish
    the missions of my command every day. So I would like to thank
    both committees for your enduring support to our Nation's
    defense and in particular for your work on our national space
    policy.
        My command, U.S. Strategic Command, is a global warfighting
    command. We set the conditions across the globe as the ultimate
    guarantor of our national and allied security, and our missions
    are to deter strategic attack and employ nuclear, space, global
    strike, joint electronic warfare, and missile defense forces as
    directed.
        To do this, we rely on timely and accurate information
    about the operational environments we operate in. Space is one
    of those environments and it is no different than any other.
    Space situational awareness is how we bring together the
    multisource data needed for space control and to assess
    adversary intentions.
        Our national security mission demands that we make the
    space environment as safe as possible to operate in, and that
    has led to our current sharing arrangements. Today, we take our
    space situational awareness data and make it available for
    space safety, but it is not an inherent mission of Strategic
    Command or the Department of Defense. And I have never believed
    the Department of Defense should have to perform that space
    traffic management for the world. We do that because we need to
    do it.
        So for a while now I have advocated to move space traffic
    management to another agency while retaining the Department of
    Defense--in the Department of Defense the essential elements of
    space situational awareness needed for our national security.
    So I believe transition is a good idea, and I support the
    actions taken by the President on Monday to designate the
    Department of Commerce as that lead. It is the right move, and
    I commit to work with the administration, the Department of
    Congress and the Congress--the Department of Commerce and the
    Congress to meet the President's space traffic management
    goals.
        So thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to be
    here. I look forward to your questions.
        [The prepared statement of General Hyten can be found in
    the Appendix on page 59.]
        Mr. Rogers. Thank you, General.
        The Chair now recognizes Administrator Bridenstine.

    STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES F. BRIDENSTINE, ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL
                  AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

        Mr. Bridenstine. Chairman Cooper, Chairman Smith, Chairman
    Babin, Ranking Member--or I should say Ranking Member Cooper
    and--Chairman Rogers, I should say, Ranking Member Cooper and
    Ranking Member Bera, it is great to be back. Thank you so much
    for having me here. It is an honor to represent NASA here
    before the Strategic Forces Subcommittee and the Space
    Subcommittee here in the House of Representatives.
        NASA has, of course, very important equities when it comes
    to space situational awareness and space traffic management. Of
    course, we have the Human Space Flight Program, and we have
    dozens of satellites that are delivering critically important
    science for our Nation and, in fact, for the entire world. So
    we have a big stake in making sure we get right space
    situational awareness and space traffic management.
        For objects that are big enough to track--of course, we
    don't do the tracking ourselves and we don't keep a catalog
    ourselves. We rely on the Strategic Command for that through
    the JSpOC [Joint Space Operations Center], but the data that we
    receive from the JSpOC we analyze very closely to make sure
    that our human space flight activities and our robotic space
    flight activities are protected and that they remain safe. So
    this is critical for us.
        Objects that are too small to track, NASA has a department,
    the Orbital Debris Program Office, that is responsible for
    characterizing that orbital debris, and we characterize it
    specifically so that we can model ultimately the risk from
    these very small pieces of debris that are not trackable. And I
    will be clear, the biggest risk is from objects that are not
    trackable. That is the biggest part of what we deal with every
    day when it comes to protecting our assets in space.
        And so we characterize, you know, where those debris fields
    are and ultimately how they could impact our missions and make
    assessments how much do we need to invest to shield our assets
    and/or maybe operate in different orbital regimes.
        So this is important to NASA. I look forward to working
    with this committee. I look forward to following the--
    implementing I should say Space Policy Directive-2 and Space
    Policy Directive-3 from the President that gives these new
    activities to the Department of Commerce.
        So, with that, I look forward to working with everybody
    here and thank you for having me.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Bridenstine can be found in
    the Appendix on page 69.]
        Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Bridenstine.
        Secretary Ross, you are recognized.

          STATEMENT OF HON. WILBUR ROSS, SECRETARY OF COMMERCE

        Secretary Ross. Good morning. Thank you, Chairman Rogers,
    Chairman Babin, Ranking Members Cooper and Bera, and both
    subcommittees, for allowing me to address you today. I would
    also like to thank Chairman Lamar Smith, Chairman Thornberry,
    and Ranking Members Johnson and Smith for your work on this
    important issue. Your continued support of this
    administration's space policy vision is greatly appreciated.
        In addition, I thank my esteemed colleagues General Hyten
    and Administrator Bridenstine for joining me on this panel. It
    is a pleasure to work with all of you--decision makers,
    leaders, and enablers of U.S. space commercial and defense
    policy. Your work is imperative to the future achievement and
    well-being of the United States.
        The Trump administration and the Department of Commerce are
    creating more opportunities for the space community to develop
    and thrive. In just 6 months, President Trump has signed three
    Presidential space directives. The first calls for human
    expansion across the solar system. It is about time. The second
    sets a schedule for streamlining regulations to unshackle
    commercial activity in space.
        Commerce is already advancing ambitious regulatory reform.
    Over the last year, we have worked with Department of Defense,
    State, Department of the Interior, and the Director of National
    Intelligence to reduce commercial remote sensing application
    timelines by about 50 percent from where they were before. We
    have cut what was 210 days down to an average of 91 days.
        The President's third space policy directive, signed at
    this week's Space Council meeting, establishes the country's
    first comprehensive national space traffic management policy.
    The directive emphasizes safety, stability, and sustainability,
    foundational elements to successful space activities, and it
    names Commerce as the new U.S. Government interface for space
    traffic coordination.
        This new policy directs the Department to provide a basic
    level of space situational awareness data for public and
    nonpublic use, based on the space catalog compiled by the
    Department of Defense [DOD]. This change will better enable DOD
    to focus on its national security mission.
        Commerce is eager to provide that service to industry, to
    facilitate continued commercial development in outer space. As
    the friend-of-business agency and not a typical old-fashioned
    regulator, we are the perfect agency for the job. Unlike in
    past generations, activity in space is becoming largely
    commercial. Commerce already engages with private space
    companies on export control, spectrum issues, remote sensing
    licensing, and trade promotion. And we already manage, with
    NASA's great support, the government's largest operational
    civil satellite fleet, 14 NOAA [National Oceanic and
    Atmospheric Administration] satellites and 4 for the Air Force.
    We also have the National Institute of Standards and
    Technology, which has a proven track record of working with
    industry to conduct research and to define scientific standards
    for business needs.
        We are looking forward to taking on this new role of space
    traffic coordination. The need for timely and accurate and
    actionable SSA data and STM [space traffic management] services
    has never been greater. DOD currently observes well over 20,000
    objects circling the Earth, many of which are softball-size or
    larger pieces of man-made space debris. These objects fly
    around Earth at dangerous speeds of up to 17,500 miles per
    hour, about 10 times the speed of a small bullet. Even more
    concerning are the estimated 600,000 smaller objects that could
    still cause significant harm if a collision occurred.
        Congestion in space will only increase. In the next few
    years, the number of American satellites in space will likely
    grow from 800 to over 15,000. As more and more objects get
    launched, effective space traffic coordination and orbital
    debris mitigation standards will help promote our Earth's
    orbits from further congestion.
        With the growth of space commerce and DOD's focus on
    national security, President Trump and the National Space
    Council determined that Commerce should become the new civil
    agency interface. With this role, Commerce can incentivize
    innovative space services, based on an open architecture data
    repository. This repository will establish a mechanism for SSA
    data sharing that will enable/enhance STM services that will
    empower greater industry-provided data and services.
    Involvement by industry, academia, and other stakeholders is
    paramount to the success of this endeavor, and it will take a
    whole of government approach to face this challenge.
        Working with NASA and DOD, Commerce is committed to
    facilitating these discussions and implementing their results
    so that the United States can provide global leadership for
    space traffic standards. America must continue to be the leader
    in space. Space traffic coordination is an important task, and
    Commerce has dedicated serious deliberation and planning in its
    execution. We have an excellent relationship with our partners
    and we will continue working with them to carry out the
    implementation plan approved by the National Space Council.
        The administration is setting clear milestones and will be
    transparent about achieving them. Commerce takes on this new
    responsibility with several goals in mind. We will be dedicated
    to creating economic growth and sustainable development in all
    industry sectors.
        Facilitating space traffic coordination will provide the
    space industry with more tools to be successful. Commerce will
    also work with industry to find ways to enhance space traffic
    coordination data and be more adaptive to industry concerns.
        Working with DOD, we will evolve the architecture that
    currently supports U.S. Strategic Command to be even more
    responsive to the space industry's needs. And we look forward
    to working with Congress to protect a safe space environment
    for future commercial growth.
        With Commerce at the helm of commercial space traffic
    coordination, we will ensure that the growing space industry
    remains open for business, and America will continue to be the
    flag of choice for space commerce.
        I will be happy to respond to any questions you may have.
    Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Secretary Ross can be found in
    the Appendix on page 76.]
        Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
        I thank all the witnesses for being here and for those
    thoughtful opening statements and for what you do for our
    country.
        I recognize myself for the first set of questions.
        General Hyten, I fully support the President's directive on
    space management policy, but I do want to make sure that I am
    clear on this, and I think you touched on it in your opening
    statement.
        Given that space is clearly now recognized as a warfighting
    domain, are you saying that you don't believe that this unique
    DOD SSA requirements can only be met by the military, that you
    believe that they can be effectively met by nonmilitary
    efforts?
        General Hyten. So the--I really need to be specific on
    that, because we have to do the space situational awareness
    mission inside Strategic Command, inside the Department of
    Defense for the missions that we have to do for national
    security space.
        Mr. Rogers. And that will continue?
        General Hyten. That will not change. That will not change
    for as far as I can see into the future, because we have to
    know that information in order to defend ourselves against
    potential threats. That is why we started doing this business
    back in the Cold War days to begin with.
        So we are going to continue that, but we don't have to be
    the public face to the world for--that is what the new decision
    is, to have the Department of Commerce be the public face to
    the world.
        Mr. Rogers. That is what I wanted to make clear, and I
    appreciate that.
        Mr. Secretary, you are right about the activity up there.
    In addition to this roughly 620,000 pieces of debris that you
    and the administrator have talked about, we have a lot of
    activity going up and going to continue to be that way. You
    talked about 600 or so, 600 to 800 satellites now and going
    toward 15,000.
        I know of Boeing and SpaceX in this country that are each
    talking about putting constellations up for broadband
    capability that can be as many as 2,000 or 3,000 satellites
    each, just small sats. And I know there is at least one Indian
    company that is doing the same thing, a couple thousand. That
    is just going to proliferate, and I have been very concerned
    about how we are going to manage that.
        Tell me exactly how you see this working as far as that
    traffic management and, more importantly, the debris mitigation
    that you made reference to. I would open that up for either one
    of the two of you.
        Secretary Ross. Well, we already are dealing a lot with
    some of these issues through NOAA, because of its satellites.
    So we have people already somewhat familiar with this sector.
    We have planned to send initial delegations out to Vandenberg,
    out to Omaha to start learning more about the specifics that
    would be involved. And we are prepared to dedicate people to
    that and have people from those entities also working at
    Commerce so that we make a seamless integration.
        Hard to predict exactly what the timeline would be, but it
    is probably something more or less on the order of a year to
    make a seamless transition between the two.
        Mr. Rogers. Do you anticipate cooperation with countries
    like China and the companies therein and companies in India
    that are going to also be concerned about this activity?
        Secretary Ross. Well, yes. We, as you know, have a very
    international map to both our activities and our physical
    presence. And parts of our activity, such as the ITA
    [International Trade Administration], the promotion entity that
    has created some $3 billion of space business already, NIST
    [National Institute of Standards and Technology] works with
    just about every country in the world in evolving standards.
    And standards and getting them agreed with other countries is
    clearly a very important part of this activity.
        Mr. Rogers. Mr. Bridenstine, how would debris mitigation
    work functionally? I just don't know. I don't have a clue.
        Mr. Bridenstine. So a couple of things. You mentioned
    earlier, Chairman Rogers, that there were going to be these
    constellations of potentially thousands of satellites in low
    Earth orbit for the purpose of communications. That is
    absolutely true.
        Where NASA is right now, we participate in what is called
    the Interagency Space Debris Coordination Committee. When this
    committee hears the word ``interagency,'' you think of within
    the U.S. Government. When we talk about the Interagency Space
    Debris Coordination Committee, we are talking about space
    agencies from around the world.
        And this interagency committee includes 13 different space
    agencies across the world. And what this organization has
    determined is that every 5 to 9 years, if launch cadences stay
    the same and the orbital debris fields stay the same, every 5
    to 9 years we are going to have a collision in low Earth orbit
    similar to the Iridium-Cosmos collision that we saw back in
    2009 that created thousands of pieces of orbital debris. Now,
    that is if launch cadences stay the same and constellations
    don't grow. In fact, we are seeing just the opposite. Launch is
    going to be happening a whole lot more frequently, especially
    if I am successful doing my job as the NASA administrator. We
    are going to see a lot more launches. We are going to see a lot
    more activity in low Earth orbit. So these kind of collisions
    beget even more collisions.
        So we have to be very careful that we don't let this
    eventually run away. And I am not saying that we are even close
    to that right now, but we need to be thinking the next 50
    years, 100 years down the road, especially as we take more
    advantage of space.
        As far as how NASA deals with a lot of the--you mentioned
    the word ``mitigation'' challenges. NASA sets standards to
    prevent new orbital debris from occurring. So when a spacecraft
    gets launched and then it separates from its upper stage,
    sometimes that can result in debris. And so we set standards
    for ourselves as an agency to limit that kind of activity so
    that we prevent or we limit as much as possible the danger from
    space debris.
        Those standards then ultimately get promulgated throughout
    the rest of the interagency within the U.S. Government. So the
    Department of Defense follows those standards. NOAA follows
    those standards, other agencies that utilize space. And
    eventually, it got to the point where now those standards are,
    you know, required for commercial operations as well and, of
    course, promulgated throughout the international community.
        So NASA has led on this. I will be clear that not all the
    countries follow the same standards, so that is often a
    challenge, but I do believe it is important for us to lead and
    that those standards could eventually get to a point where
    there is enough international pressure that around the world
    countries will have to follow those standards.
        Mr. Rogers. Great. Thank you very much.
        The Chair now recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Cooper,
    for any questions he may have.
        Mr. Cooper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I too would like to welcome the witnesses. I appreciate Mr.
    Bridenstine's chart here. I think that is very helpful in
    helping us understand the debris problem. I am worried, though,
    that the chart underestimates the difficulty. As you point out
    in your testimony and Secretary Ross does as well, we have some
    600,000 pieces of very tiny debris to monitor, because each one
    of those pieces could be deadly.
        General Hyten. That is right.
        Mr. Cooper. And as all the witnesses said, this problem is
    only increasing and it is probably increasing exponentially. So
    right now as we are offloading the priceless work the Air Force
    has been doing for space traffic management, right now we are
    reaching the acute phase, the urgent phase for the entire
    planet when, as Secretary Ross pointed out, a large percentage
    of today's space debris is the result of just two collisions,
    just two, and how there are going to be thousands and perhaps
    tens of thousands of collision possibilities. And as the
    Secretary also pointed out in his testimony, each one of these
    could lead to a devastating chain reaction of creating yet
    further debris, which could tax the power of even the fastest
    supercomputer to monitor all these orbits and trajectories and
    speeds and things like that.
        So a simple question: Should we punish nations or companies
    that cause satellite debris? It is one thing to use carrots.
    Are we also going to consider sticks? To each of the witnesses.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Ranking Member Cooper, within the Outer
    Space Treaty, nations are responsible for what they do in
    space. There is a liability that nations have for these kind of
    activities. Unfortunately, if you look throughout history, some
    very nefarious activities have happened in space.
        On your subcommittee, we talk about the 2007 direct ascent
    antisatellite missile launched by China that hit one of their
    own weather satellites and created an orbital debris field of
    thousands of pieces that we are, in fact, still dealing with
    today in low Earth orbit. The challenge that we have is
    enforcement at the international level. It is a big challenge.
        So certainly we have seen activities change, based on
    international pressure, but we haven't seen really any
    enforcement as far as liability, anybody paying the price for
    the damage that they have done to low Earth orbit.
        Mr. Cooper. Let's make it a U.S.-only issue. Should we
    punish a U.S. company that causes needless space debris?
        Mr. Bridenstine. That is a good question, sir. I would like
    to take that for the record, maybe get back to you on what a
    good approach on that might be.
        But certainly--and I think you are aware of this keenly--we
    want to maximize the utility of space. We want commercial
    companies to have access and availability. And if they are not,
    in fact, following the rules, we could deny access to space for
    everybody altogether, which would undermine our ability to
    maximize the utility of space. So there should be some kind of
    legal regime, yes, sir.
        Mr. Cooper. My time is limited with all the other members
    here, but there is the attribution problem. NASA currently has
    a statistical model to track these 600,000 pieces. How do you
    tell a satellite company or, worse, an astronaut that they died
    or were killed because of a statistic? People will want
    attribution.
        If you have enough data to form the model, then there must
    be some reasonable source for that data. So we have got to
    figure this out, because the 600,000 pieces you are tracking
    today could be tens of millions or billions shortly.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes, sir. Attribution is critical, and
    some of the new technologies that are being developed right now
    could help us to attribute, you know, a piece of orbital debris
    that caused somebody's loss of life to a specific nation or
    company. That is a challenge going forward for sure.
        Mr. Cooper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Rogers. Thank you. The Chair now recognizes Chairman
    Babin for any questions he may have.
        Mr. Babin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Thank you, witnesses, for being here too.
        Secretary Ross, I would like to start with you, if you
    don't mind. I would like to start by stating my support for the
    President's Space Policy Directive-3. And while I am at it, I
    support 1 and 2 as well. In Congress, we have a responsibility
    to protect the taxpayer. Government spending and bureaucracy is
    a serious concern. However, not improving the Nation's civil
    space situational awareness and space traffic management
    framework is unacceptable.
        What steps will be taken to protect against unnecessary
    spending and how much funding will be needed to carry this
    policy out?
        Secretary Ross. Thank you for that question, sir. This
    activity will report to the regulatory reform officer at
    Commerce. And as you may be aware, we have already dismantled
    65 regulations, which is more than any other Cabinet
    department.
        So we are keenly aware of the importance of reducing
    bureaucratic burden, both in terms of direct taxpayer expense
    and in terms of the burden unnecessarily placed on industry. So
    that will be one of the activities we have very, very much in
    mind.
        Mr. Babin. Okay. Thank you. Then the next question for
    Administrator Bridenstine, NASA has substantial technical
    expertise relevant to improving space situational awareness and
    space traffic management. For example, Johnson Space Center is
    home to the world-renowned orbital debris scientists. Under SD-
    3, how will NASA leverage its expertise to further our national
    SSA and STM efforts?
        Mr. Bridenstine. It is a wonderful question, Chairman. So
    under Space Policy Directive-3 and the implementation guidance,
    NASA is directed to lead a research and technology effort that
    takes advantages of the capabilities that we already have, but
    also make investments to improve on those capabilities and
    technologies.
        I think our biggest area of focus historically has been
    investing in characterizing the orbital debris population that
    cannot be tracked because it is too small, and then assessing
    risk based on that orbital debris population. And, of course,
    Space Policy Directive-3 is going to take it a step further and
    give us authorities to ultimately make investments to do space
    situational awareness or, you know, potentially, you know,
    creating an environment--kind of the way I see NASA being
    involved.
        I will just start over here a little bit. Kind of like the
    way NASA does unmanned aerial systems traffic management, we
    don't want to be involved in doing unmanned aerial systems
    traffic management for the United States of America and
    integrating UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] in into the
    airspace. That is not the job of NASA. But what we can do is we
    can do the technology demonstrations, we can do pilot programs,
    we can do the research, and then ultimately take all of what we
    learn and hand it over to the FAA [Federal Aviation
    Administration], which is the way NASA is dealing with UTM,
    unmanned aerial systems traffic management, right now.
        I think going forward, under Space Policy Directive-3, we
    are going to be charged with the same thing, maybe doing pilot
    programs, demonstrating technology, and then ultimately handing
    it over to Commerce, which will have the lead on space
    situational awareness and space traffic management in the
    future.
        It is also true that NASA will not be creating data. That
    is ultimately not what we do. Of course, the Air Force or I
    should say Strategic Command creates data through the JSpOC,
    and then that data could be provided to Commerce. It could also
    be provided to commercial partners. And then the data that
    Commerce has would be augmented probably also with commercial
    partners.
        And what NASA can do is ultimately test a lot of the
    technologies, test the data, and then ultimately implement a
    plan to help Commerce lead the effort.
        Mr. Babin. Great. Okay, thank you.
        And then, General Hyten, the DOD and in particular the Air
    Force has proposed a significant increase in their space
    capabilities with the fiscal year 2019 budget. Would you talk a
    little bit about these capabilities that this increased
    investment will provide and how they will enhance your
    warfighting mission?
        General Hyten. Mr. Chairman, I am a combatant commander, so
    the specific answer can come from the Air Force. But as a
    combatant commander, I do advocate for those capabilities.
        And I am very aware of what the Air Force has put in the
    budget, and I am pleased with the improvements the Air Force
    has made in the budget, because those improvements come in a
    number of different ways. For the purpose of this hearing, a
    lot of those improvements are in space situational awareness.
        The Air Force now has a joint program with the National
    Reconnaissance Office called Silent Barker where, instead of
    having two programs on two different sides of the national
    security space business, there will be one. That one program
    will improve our situational awareness of the geosynchronous
    orbit in a significant way.
        We are also producing the Space Fence. The Space Fence will
    come online in 2019. That capability will allow us to see
    hundreds of thousands of objects that we don't see today. That
    data will be critical to our mission in the Department of
    Defense, but we can also provide that to the Department of
    Commerce and NASA to allow this broader piece to happen.
        And then, broadly speaking, what you see in the budget is
    an improvement of our ability to defend ourselves against
    threats in space. What you see is a change of our architecture
    from a large status quo structured approach to a more resilient
    survivable capability that can defend ourselves in the future.
    And then you see in the classified world a lot of work being
    put to make sure we have the ability to defend ourselves if we
    are attacked.
        Mr. Babin. And then right along those same lines, how will
    the establishment of a civil SSA program at the Department of
    Commerce benefit DOD and continue to protect national
    interests?
        General Hyten. So we talked about the Iridium-Cosmos
    collision in 2009. I was the investigating officer of that
    collision. And one of the things we realized--and General
    Chilton was the commander of Strategic Command at the time. And
    when I briefed him, we kind of came to the realization that we
    are going to have to do this flight safety mission ourselves.
    And we had to take about a hundred airmen, a hundred military
    people off of other missions and put them on that in order to
    do that mission.
        Now, we have become a little more efficient as we have gone
    through the years, because we have been able to improve our
    automation and capabilities, but we still have dozens and
    dozens of airmen that do that all the time. When we move that
    now into the Department of Commerce, we still have to do the
    job for ourselves, but we will be able to free up those airmen
    to focus on the warfighting missions that we need to worry
    about. That is what we get out of this new approach.
        Mr. Babin. Yes, sir.
        And then finally, Secretary Ross, Space Directive Number 3
    states that basic space situational awareness and space traffic
    management services should be provided free of direct user
    fees. And just to clear up some concern and questions, what
    services are considered basic and what are some examples of
    services that go beyond basic?
        Secretary Ross. Well, thank you. We can use the same
    definition of basic services as has been used historically. We
    don't see any reason to change that. But a major function will
    be an open architecture approach to it. Commerce is directed to
    build that under SPD-3 [Space Policy Directive-3] to
    incorporate DOD and NASA information with information from
    international partners and commercial operated data. So it will
    be a two-directional set of communications, and that will
    create an enhanced space situational awareness picture.
        Mr. Babin. And then how about the basic--what is
    considered--what would be considered beyond basic?
        Secretary Ross. Well, the idea of open architecture. Right
    now, there is not an open architecture. It is a one-way
    communication channel. We think there is merit to having inputs
    with information from international partners, as we do right
    now with the National Weather Service. We coordinate with lots
    and lots of other government entities in other parts of the
    world, and that is a very important part of our activity.
        Mr. Babin. Okay. Thank you.
        And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        The Chair now recognizes Ranking Member Mr. Bera for any
    questions he may have.
        Mr. Bera. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        And obviously, this is an incredibly timely hearing. Before
    I ask my questions, I also just want to be clear that we have
    not made a decision, this body, Congress, as to where space
    situational awareness should be housed. So that is not an
    administrative decision; that is a congressional decision.
        And Secretary Ross, with all due respect, I don't want the
    Department of Commerce to start making those plans, because, as
    has already been raised in each of the testimonies, this is
    incredibly important as we go forward.
        Now, I think it is important, you know, under the
    leadership of both chairmen, of HASC [House Armed Services
    Committee] as well as Science, Space, and Technology, I know
    Chairman Smith, Chairman Babin, the Ranking Member Johnson, we
    have been talking about this quite a bit and we have got to get
    this right. It is better to get it right, because this is the
    21st century. We have to make sure that DOD has everything that
    it needs to continue to do the important work of protecting our
    vital assets in space.
        And, you know, as Administrator Bridenstine has already
    pointed out, we don't want to stifle the innovation in the
    commercial sector. We don't want to stifle the interest in the
    international community. But we want to do this right and we do
    need that, for lack of a better way of describing it, air
    traffic control cop that is going to, you know, put everyone in
    the right lane and, you know, to the best of our abilities
    prevent accidents from happening in space.
        You know, it really does have the possibility of
    transforming what the 21st century looks like. So, you know,
    again, this Congress, as a deliberative body, has oversight
    over, you know, what situational awareness looks like in the
    21st century. I appreciate the interest of the President and
    the Vice President, the Space Council, and your interest,
    Secretary Ross, but we have got to do our work and we are not
    abdicating that responsibility.
        So, Secretary Ross, if we are looking at housing
    situational awareness within Department of Commerce, there is a
    lot that has to go into this transition. What kind of resources
    are necessary? What kind of oversight? How do you share
    information that only the Department of Defense is probably
    going to be able to see? How do you make that publicly
    available? How do you make that internationally available?
        I would ask, are you prepared through your department to
    present an implementation and transition plan to Congress and
    to this body?
        Secretary Ross. We certainly would if and when we are
    authorized to undertake the function. But we already, as I
    mentioned, we disseminate to the public about 40 percent of all
    the factual information emitted by the administration. So we
    are very used to packaging information, getting it to the right
    place, getting it in the right format for people to use.
        And one example is space weather is, as you know, a very
    major factor in this whole situation, because of the impact it
    has on things that are orbiting around. Well, we are already
    keenly involved with space weather through our space satellites
    that are part of the National Weather Service. So we are
    already into that aspect of it and in a very good position, for
    example, to integrate that with these other activities.
        Mr. Bera. Well great. As my colleague from Colorado, who is
    helping us push a space weather bill through Congress, it might
    sound really geeky or wonky, but incredibly important since all
    of the technology that we rely on, GPS [Global Positioning
    System] technology, et cetera, not just our military but
    everyday consumers and individuals.
        General Hyten, we have put a lot of responsibility on the
    DOD and the Air Force, and the DOD has done a wonderful job
    kind of monitoring; and, you know, it is time that we relieve
    you of some of that burden for the international world and the
    commercial sector.
        From my perspective, as we go through this transition,
    there still are going to be unique capabilities that only the
    DOD has and only the DOD should have. We will have to think
    through how that information gets passed on to NASA or to
    Commerce or Department of Transportation. And as you are
    thinking through this, do you have any thoughts of what we
    should be thinking about as a deliberative body?
        General Hyten. So a couple of thoughts. So I think from the
    largest perspective, we have to make sure that as we go forward
    in the future we always have the ability to make sure we
    understand what our adversaries are doing. That means we have
    to have exquisite situational awareness of exactly what is
    happening on a real-time basis. That is why you have authorized
    significant amounts of taxpayer dollars to be put against this
    problem.
        As we go into this different sharing arrangement, though, I
    think the first rule that comes to mind is the first rule of
    wing walking, and that is you don't let go of the strut until
    you have good hold of the next strut, which means we can't let
    loose of, you know, what we have now and what we are doing
    until we know what is on the other side.
        SPD-3 says for the future, the Department of Defense is
    responsible for providing the authoritative catalog for our
    country. That means the catalog will come out of the Department
    of Defense. Now we have to push that into Department of
    Commerce, into NASA, into other places.
        We are going to look with open eyes at how we do that, what
    the way is that we do that, are there better ways to do that. I
    think you will see things as we go through the coming year of
    different ways to do it. But, again, don't let go of the one
    strut until you got hold of the next one.
        Mr. Bera. And I share that sentiment. Let's hold onto that
    strut. Let's think in a deliberative fashion what this looks
    like. Think through all the different scenarios and then come
    up with the right decision. Better to be deliberative about
    this and get it right as opposed to be hasty about this.
        Administrator Bridenstine--and, Jim, it is good to see you
    on that side of the podium--I know we share a mutual interest
    in, you know, allowing the commercial sector and recognizing
    the importance of space, but I think we also share a value, and
    I think all of us in this room share this value that the world
    is best served with American leadership, and, you know, that
    translates to space as well.
        And, you know, I do think, you know, in how we look at the
    world, NASA is going to be critically important as we address
    this framework. Because it is not just a domestic issue; this
    is an international issue. And let's get this framework right
    and then take it to the international community so it does set
    that framework.
        Do you have any thoughts of what we should be thinking
    about?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Absolutely, Ranking Member Bera. And it is
    good to be here. Thank you for that. And this goes really to
    the heart of what Chairman Babin was talking about was what is
    basic space situational awareness data? What is that? Because
    it is very clear in SPD-3 and the implementation guidance that
    that needs to be without fee, and the question is why. And as
    you mentioned, American leadership here matters.
        So we need to have, in my view, some basic SSA data
    available for free, because then when people all around the
    world are making investments, making determinations where they
    are going to invest their money to do space activities, they
    are going to make that determination in the United States of
    America, because we will have a regime that provides safety and
    security for their investments and at the same time is without
    fee. So that attracts capital to the United States. It keeps us
    in a preeminent position.
        Now, there will be debate about the fact that some people
    would like to see commercial companies--and this would be a
    good thing and I support it. Some people would like to see
    commercial companies providing the space situational awareness
    and space traffic management. We could have a regime where
    maybe Commerce were to license commercial companies to do that
    activity, and then before you launch you have to prove to
    Commerce that you have purchased or bought a subscription to
    one of those commercial companies providing SSA and STM.
        So that is a model where you would have a competitive
    market to provide more data and better data, with multiple
    [SSA]/STM providers all licensed by Commerce, but at the same
    time we get back to what is that basic [SSA]/STM that would be
    provided without fee. And this is going to be a balance,
    because ultimately we want people to make investments in the
    United States of America, and at the same time we want a
    commercial competitive marketplace where these providers of STA
    and--SSA and STM, they are competing to provide more data and
    better data at a lower cost, driving down insurance rates, all
    those kind of things.
        So this is not going to be an easy thing, as you have
    already identified, but here is what I think all of us believe.
    It has to be done, because what is at stake is so important
    right now.
        Mr. Bera. Great. And with that, I yield back.
        Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Bera.
        The Chair now recognizes Chairman Lamar Smith for any
    questions he may have.
        Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        First of all, let me say that it is gratifying to see the
    cooperation and collaboration between the two committees that
    has resulted in this hearing today. This may be a first. It is
    certainly the first in many years, and I hope it will be an
    example of further cooperation between our committees.
        Second of all, it is nice to see a former member of the
    Science, Space, and Technology Committee as the new
    administrator of NASA. Jim Bridenstine is the right person at
    the right time in the right place, and that doesn't happen that
    often, but it is nice that it happened here.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you, sir.
        Mr. Smith. Jim, good to be with you.
        Secretary Ross, let me direct my first question to you, and
    I think this will help a number of members here. Would you go
    into some detail as to why you think the Department of Commerce
    is the best agency to oversee the space traffic management?
        Secretary Ross. Yes, sir. First of all, as you know, we
    have elevated all of the space activities within Commerce into
    the Office of Space Commerce, which reports directly to me. So
    rather than being fragmented, rather than being buried in
    different parts of the Department, we are pulling it all
    together. That in and of itself will make it more functional,
    less bureaucratic than it had been.
        In terms of specific things that we can do, the ITA has the
    statutory duty, as does the Office of Space Commerce, to
    promote and assist this burgeoning space industry. The National
    Institute for Standards and Technology, which has a very proven
    record in developing standards and having them adopted
    throughout global economies, will be very, very involved. NTIA
    [National Telecommunications and Information Administration],
    which manages Federal spectrum use for space communications,
    will also play a very important role in it. And then NOAA, as
    you know, it already oversees the largest operational space
    force in the private civil sector.
        So those are some of the experiences that we already have.
    Notwithstanding, we continue to engage with our partners at the
    Department of Transportation on a variety of issues, and we
    will be working quite intensely with NASA on the one hand and
    with DOD on the other hand.
        So we already are planning within the next couple of weeks
    to send, as I mentioned, a delegation to Omaha and to
    Vandenberg. So we are trying very hard to figure out the proper
    way to integrate ourselves.
        Mr. Smith. Okay.
        Secretary Ross. The other thing that you should be aware,
    many companies that don't need a license actually put a camera
    on their payload anyway to get the license for remote sensing
    from Commerce. And the reason they do that is it deals with
    their compliance with the Outer Space Treaty.
        So here you have companies volunteering to come under the
    regulatory regime of the Department of Commerce. And I think
    that speaks volumes about the degree to which the industry
    feels we and they can work in very good unison together.
        Mr. Smith. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
        Administrator Bridenstine, NASA has had a long and strong
    relationship with the Department of Defense that you have
    mentioned, and should the Department of Commerce take over the
    space traffic management, is your relationship with DOD going
    to change one way or the other? And also, what would be NASA's
    role in dealing with the Department of Commerce on some of the
    issues that you have been dealing with the Department of
    Defense?
        Mr. Bridenstine. That is a wonderful question. So even
    right now, NASA has folks at the JSpOC that are looking out for
    the interest of NASA, with all the great data and tools that
    are available inside the JSpOC. So that is happening right now.
        And if there is a NASA asset that could be at risk because
    of an object that is being tracked at the JSpOC, those orbital
    safety analysts ultimately take that data and they get in touch
    with one of two people. They go straight to Johnson, where they
    report it to the trajectory operations officer, we call it the
    TOPO, you know, at Johnson Space Center.
        And then they do further analysis to determine if that
    object could ultimately put the International Space Station at
    risk. That is what they are specifically looking for. And then
    if it does, what do we do about it? So that is on one hand. And
    on the other hand, some of the data goes to CARA [Conjunction
    Assessment Risk Analysis], which is over at Goddard, for the
    robotic capabilities.
        But I guess my point is to your question, the answer is
    yes, we have a great working relationship with the Department
    of Defense. We have our NASA personnel working side by side
    with their folks at the JSpOC feeding data to our centers to
    make sure that our assets are protected. And I anticipate that
    will continue.
        As General Hyten has said, if we win we move to a day where
    Commerce is at the helm of space situational awareness and
    traffic management, it is absolutely true that the Department
    of Defense will continue to keep the catalog, because they need
    to for their own purposes.
        So it is possible that NASA would continue to have our
    personnel maybe at the JSpOC. No decision has been made. Maybe
    we could take the data from the DOD and combine it with
    commercial data over at Commerce and international data over at
    Commerce and ultimately get a better integrated space picture
    at a different agency, not that that would necessarily happen,
    but it could. And if it did happen, then we would want our
    folks over at Commerce and we would probably keep them at DOD
    as well. But, again, this is way early and undetermined at this
    point.
        Mr. Smith. Okay. Thank you, Administrator Bridenstine.
        And, General Hyten, let me ask my last question to you. And
    it has just been mentioned both by the administrator and by
    Congressman Bera a few minutes ago in regard to the catalog of
    space objects that users take advantage of to avoid collisions
    in space. If the Department of Commerce takes over that
    responsibility and others that are now assumed by the
    Department of Defense, do you see any diminution in the quality
    of product, any diminution in the quality of service if the
    Department of Commerce takes over some of those
    responsibilities?
        General Hyten. So, Mr. Chairman, I think that the line in
    the Space Policy Directive-3 that says the Department of
    Defense has to maintain the authority of the catalog, the
    reason that is there is because you can't have arguing
    catalogs. You can't have one in the Department of Commerce and
    one in the Department of Defense and then you end up arguing.
        We actually used to have that inside the Department of
    Defense, because we had one that was done by the Navy, one that
    was done by the Air Force. And it is not healthy to be arguing
    over which one is better. You have to take the best data, build
    that catalog. And that is why I said the authoritative catalog
    will always be in the Department of Defense. Then we will feed
    that data into the Department of Commerce.
        And they can take other pieces to do the interface with
    other nations, with the commercial sector, possibly with NASA.
    I would envision what Congressman Bride--I did it--
    Administrator Bridenstine said. I would see it at the JSpOC at
    Vandenberg, soon to be the Coalition Space Operations Center.
    We will have international partners, NASA, Commerce there, and
    then we will feed information out of there into Commerce, into
    NASA. I think that is the healthy way. But, like Secretary Ross
    said, we are still in the early days of figuring this out.
        Mr. Smith. Still, that clarification that you just
    mentioned I think is very reassuring to us, and it portends a
    wonderful relationship between DOD and the Department of
    Commerce.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        The Chair now recognizes Ranking Member Johnson for any
    questions she may have.
        Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good
    morning. Let me welcome our witnesses and thank you for your
    service.
        General, the Obama administration had considered agency
    roles and responsibilities for the civil SSA data and
    information services and had reached an interagency agreement
    that FAA assume that role. I understand that FAA, in
    coordination with DOD, was planning to do a pilot program at
    FAA on civil SSA data and information services.
        What would that pilot program have entailed, and what are
    your thoughts on a pilot program as part of the transition of
    SSA data sharing to the civil agency?
        General Hyten. So thank you for the question, because it is
    important that we kind of go back in history a little bit to
    look at that. Because I have been working in this world for
    over two decades. In 1998 I transitioned a mission, a weather
    mission out of the Air Force into the Department of Commerce.
        For the last 10 years, really since the Iridium-Cosmos
    collision in 2009, I have been working very hard in the
    interagency to try to figure out where to put that mission,
    because it is not inherently a DOD mission.
        And so in the last administration, we were working with
    Commerce and Transportation. The FAA was going to do a pilot
    program. That pilot program was going to basically look at what
    it would take for us to ship the catalog into that organization
    and for them what kind of analysis tools, what kind of pieces
    would they have in order to do that information.
        As we have transitioned, this administration and the new
    SPD-3 that just came out says Commerce is going to take the
    lead on that, based on the burgeoning commercial sector. From
    the STRATCOM [Strategic Command] perspective, from the DOD
    perspective, bluntly, it doesn't matter to me. We need a civil
    agency that is doing that role. Commerce makes sense.
    Transportation makes sense. That is a political decision. I
    think that Secretary Ross has made a good argument today of why
    Commerce is properly the situation to do that.
        I will work with whatever element that our Nation decides
    is the right place to do it, and SPD-3 makes it clear that
    Commerce right now is the lead. So in the next few weeks, we
    will be working closely with Commerce. If that changes, I will
    work with whoever it takes.
        Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much.
        Any other comments from other panel members?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Can you repeat the question one more time?
        Ms. Johnson. The question that I had posed is about the
    program, pilot program that had started with the FAA being the
    lead and if any information is transferable or----
        Mr. Bridenstine. So I think some of the arguments are that
    especially commercial industry would like a one-stop shop. And
    one of the challenges we have right now is that, from my
    perspective, it looks very difficult to find a one-stop shop,
    because you have got the FCC [Federal Communications
    Commission] that is responsible for spectrum. You have got NOAA
    that is responsible for remote sensing and imaging and that
    kind of regulation. You have got the FAA that is responsible
    for launch and reentry. And, of course, NASA is responsible for
    giving advice on, you know, protecting the space environment
    when it comes to orbital debris and even, you know, preventing
    harmful contamination of planets and things like that.
        So there are a whole host of different agencies involved in
    space at different levels. So the question then becomes how you
    do create a one-stop shop, and it looks increasingly more and
    more difficult all the time.
        So how do we minimize--this is the key I think, Ranking
    Member Johnson, that we all have to recognize. How do we create
    the maximum regulatory certainty with the minimal regulatory
    burden? And if we can consolidate these activities in one
    Federal agency or another, that minimizes the regulatory burden
    for the commercial operators especially.
        So Secretary of Commerce has I think very clearly
    articulated that they believe they have the capability. The
    President's Space Policy Directive-3 says that they want
    Commerce to lead that activity. And I think that is a great
    idea. In fact, I voted on the American Space Commerce Free
    Enterprise Act and supported it in the subcommittee and the
    full committee when I was on the other side of the--other side
    of the aisle here. So I think the key is it needs to be done. I
    think Commerce is a good place to do it.
        Ms. Johnson. Thank you.
        Did you have any comment, Mr. Ross?
        Secretary Ross. Yes. Well, couple of things. Commerce
    already has many space industry-facing resources. By statute,
    we are obliged to foster growth in the space commerce industry
    through the Office of Space Commerce.
        Second, we license satellite remote sensing activities
    through the Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs
    Office.
        Third, we manage Federal spectrum through the National
    Telecommunications and Information Administration.
        Fourth, we manage space weather data collection and
    distribution through NOAA.
        Fifth, we enforce the export administration regulations as
    they apply to space objects through the Bureau of Industry and
    Security.
        Sixth, we promote U.S.-based industry abroad through the
    International Trade Administration.
        And finally, once the payload is separated from the rocket,
    it is usually a different owner. The launch system is very
    different and it is usually a different entity from the one who
    has the payload. So there is no continuity between launch and
    what goes on once the payload is in outer space. That payload
    often is not, comes under our orbit in any event.
        I hope that explains why we think we are quite logical.
        Ms. Johnson. Yes, sir. What agencies now within Federal
    Government that currently carries out the research on SSA and
    the orbital debris, and to what extent are those activities
    coordinated?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Ranking Member Johnson, NASA, of course,
    does a lot of the research and technology. We really kind of
    set the standards that ultimately get followed by the other
    agencies. So NASA is very involved in it. We partner with
    universities and the commercial industry to come up with the
    best practices and the technology and research. And so, when it
    comes to the S&T [science and technology] piece of it, NASA
    really takes the lead.
        General Hyten. And Representative Johnson, we have a lot of
    capability in the Department of Defense to look at that, but I
    would agree with Administrator Bridenstine, that NASA is the
    lead when it comes to the S&T into that. We take most of the
    algorithms and incorporate into what we do. We have to be able
    to characterize that, which is why we still do research in that
    area, but NASA is clearly the lead.
        Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. Just one final question.
    How could this work be leveraged in a civil operational SSA
    system?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So ultimately, the idea behind SSA and
    STM, if we want to be as safe as possible, we need more data,
    and we need better data, more accurate data, and we need the
    ability to process that data. And so when it comes to science
    and technology, which is what NASA does, those are investments
    that we make. We want to be able to get more data, better data,
    and be able to process it in a way that ultimately gives us a
    much more safe environment, and then take that and hand it to
    the agencies that actually do SSA and STM.
        Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Rogers. I thank the gentlelady.
        The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Colorado, Mr.
    Lamborn, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all the
    chairmen for putting together this great hearing. And thank you
    for the panelists for what you are doing for our country. And I
    have got one question for each one of you.
        General Hyten, a lot of the data standards work for space
    situational awareness is done in Colorado Springs at Air Force
    Space Command. So how will this policy affect that tremendously
    important work?
        General Hyten. So the work that we need in order to
    characterize threats will continue. It will continue through
    STRATCOM, through my Joint Force Space Component commander, who
    is also the Air Force Space Command commander in Colorado. He
    has the people that do that work. That work will continue. It
    has to continue. But I think what will change as we look into
    the future, and this is just a natural progression as we look
    in the domain, is that we will have to partner closer with, not
    only NASA, and the Department of Commerce, Department of
    Transportation, but the commercial sector as well, because
    there is a number of significant commercial entities that
    actually do this mission. And they have capabilities that we
    need to be able to leverage as well.
        So it can't be that one size fits all. We have to take the
    best debris from wherever it comes and integrate that to
    provide the best capabilities we can.
        The interesting thing that, you know, following on to what
    Administrator Bridenstine just said about the data, most of the
    data comes from the Air Force. Most of the data comes from the
    Department of Defense. We will ship that into multiple places,
    though, and people can use that data to produce better
    products. And I think that if we do it right, we will get
    benefit out of that and the Department of Defense because the
    folks that do that business will learn from others doing it as
    well and we will apply the best practices in the business that
    we have to do in the military.
        Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Thank you. And oh, I see that the clock
    is working now. So I guess I better hurry.
        Administrator Bridenstine, and we have touched on this
    already with other questions previously, but do you believe
    that utilization of best of breed commercial SSA processing
    software for enhanced foundational SSA for NASA to avoid a
    potential catastrophic debris collision with the International
    Space Station is the best way to go? Or where should that
    software come from?
        Mr. Bridenstine. That is a great question. The answer is to
    the extent--and, of course, this is in the future, we are not
    there yet--but to the extent we have a regime to do space
    situational awareness and space traffic management that is
    outside the Department of Defense, and instead in a civil
    entity, there are different ways it could be organized.
        And, of course, one of the ways it could be organized is
    that it could be done by commercial providers of space
    situational awareness that, in fact, some of which exist right
    now today. The Space Data Association, for example, the ComSpOC
    [Commercial Space Operations Center], and there are other
    companies providing data that feed the ComSpOC and the Space
    Data Association. So these are all technologies and
    capabilities that can be done commercially, can be done
    privately.
        The question is, going back to what General Hyten was
    talking about earlier, is who controls, who manages the data
    set, the catalog that is definitive. And ultimately, can it be
    enhanced with commercial, and those kind of things?
        One model, as I said earlier, is you could have multiple
    commercial companies and/or non-profits or universities
    competing to provide SSA and STM to space operators. And the
    reason you want competition is because it drives down price, it
    increases innovation. Again, you get better data and more data.
    That is a model that works. And then ultimately, the people
    that pay for the data, that pay for the subscription would be
    the operators.
        It is also true that we have to balance this with the idea
    that we don't want to drive people to other countries for their
    space situational awareness and space traffic management by
    having people in the United States pay for a subscription or
    pay for fees. So this is a balancing act.
        We want the United States of America to be preeminent when
    it comes to SSA/STM; and at the same time, we want to have
    commercial capabilities that give us more data, better data,
    and a competitive environment to drive down cost and increase
    innovation.
        So it is very early in the process. It is something that we
    really need to think through, and I am happy to be a part of
    it.
        Mr. Lamborn. Okay, thank you.
        And I was going to ask you, Secretary Ross, the same
    question. In just a few remaining seconds, do you want to
    address that? And then I will yield back the balance of my
    time.
        Secretary Ross. Well, I agree very much with what the
    administrator has just said. There are alternate models that
    could be used, but at the end of the day, somebody in
    government needs either to do it, or to license the private
    sector to do it. So either model in concept could work, but you
    still need a government interface. I don't think it is an
    activity that should just be left unbridled to the private
    sector. And I think everybody up here will agree with that.
        Mr. Bridenstine. I agree with that, Mr. Secretary.
        Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Thank you. I yield back.
        Mr. Rogers. I thank the gentleman.
        The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr.
    Norcross, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Norcross. Thank you, Chairmans, for coming together to
    have this discussion.
        And it is good to see a member of HASC as the administrator
    of NASA, certainly. The questions that I want to follow up on
    are ones that we have all been working around.
        When we talk about the assets, the assets of collection,
    whether ground-based or space-based, who ultimately will be the
    decider of those assets? Who is going to purchase them? Who is
    going to look into them? And when that decision is made, I
    would assume most of these things are going to have to go
    through the Department of Defense first to say what is
    sensitive nature and who decides, who makes that decision,
    whether or not this information gets released to the commercial
    side.
        So, A, the assets, who is going to make the ultimate
    investments, and I have heard you talk about the commercial
    side, but ultimately--we don't want duplication, but it all
    goes through the filter of the Department of Defense. So
    ultimately, who makes that decision on what information gets
    derived to the commercial side and who pays for the assets? If
    we could start with General Hyten.
        General Hyten. I will start, Congressman.
        So I believe that if you look at it as a building block of
    capabilities, I think the baseline capabilities is in the
    Department of Defense, and the Department of Defense will have
    to pay for that baseline. That baseline is what we need in
    order to understand what our adversaries are doing in space----
        Mr. Norcross. That is the highest and number one priority.
        General Hyten. That is the number one priority. So the bill
    for that comes to the Department of Defense. We have to pay for
    the sensors. We have to pay for the ground sensors, the space
    sensors, and the processing that allows us to do that. Now,
    that is the baseline. But it doesn't talk about the interface
    with the commercial sector. It doesn't talk about the interface
    with others. We have been making that up. I mean, literally
    making it up for 9 years now. We need to have a structured
    process. And that is where the commercial sector can come in.
    That is where the Department of Commerce can come in. And they
    can look at a different way of doing business.
        They can bring in other sources of information, other
    display tools, other capabilities that can do that. They may
    decide that there are other sources from the international
    community that they can bring in. I would hope that we have a
    partnership where if they bring other sources, they will feed
    that into our algorithm so we can take advantage of that too.
    We will have to work through those issues, but I see there is a
    baseline building block that the Department of Defense is
    responsible for, and then NASA, Commerce, the commercial
    sector, can build on top of that for other applications and
    other needs.
        Mr. Norcross. But would you ultimately have veto power if
    there is a piece of information that is coming from the
    Commerce side over to you that you see.
        Mr. Rogers. Ms. Norcross, is your microphone on?
        Mr. Norcross. Hello.
        Mr. Rogers. There we go.
        Mr. Norcross. I usually can be heard. Do you ultimately
    have veto power on what information gets released?
        General Hyten. So I think veto power is maybe too strong a
    statement. We are not going to have veto power. But this is the
    way it would work from a Department of Defense perspective, the
    algorithm that we use that processes all of this information
    that comes in, it is exquisite information, and we are going to
    take commercial, international, we are going to take all the
    information that we get. But believe it or not, some of it is
    better than others. Some data is better than other data. And
    the algorithms will be able to tell. And so if the data that we
    get from whatever source is deemed not as good and not
    providing the most accurate answer, we won't use that data in
    our solution set. That is why it comes back to the
    authoritative catalog is the key.
        The authoritative catalog will take all the best data
    information. But at this point in time, from my perspective,
    all data is good, and then we will mathematically decide what
    is the best data.
        Mr. Norcross. And then on the commercial side is where you
    would make those decisions?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So there could be capabilities where
    somebody who has, maybe a commercial radar, or a commercial
    telescope that is creating their own data, that they could
    actually get data that the Commerce Department might not have.
    Or they could get data that even the DOD might not have. And
    then they could share that data with either or both.
        So we don't want to limit the idea that only the government
    can do it. We need to have partners that can share. One of the
    challenges sometimes, is that when you think about
    international data, they might not want to give it to Strategic
    Command. They might be willing to share data with Commerce. So
    that is a reason, another reason we need a civil authority
    doing this rather than simply the Department of Defense.
        It is a lot like NASA, as a matter of fact. A lot of
    countries around the world don't want to partner with the
    United States Air Force, but they love to partner with NASA,
    because we are a separate space agency capable of doing science
    and technology apart from any kind of military capability, so--
    --
        Mr. Norcross. This is where you would allow the private
    sector who was doing this also in through those doors?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Absolutely. And a lot of that private
    sector might be more than happy to share the data with the
    Department of Defense or others, and, in fact, they already do,
    in many cases.
        General Hyten. That is why I say I hope they would share,
    but I can't guarantee that.
        Mr. Norcross. I yield back.
        Mr. Rogers. I thank the gentleman. The Chair now recognizes
    the gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. And this is very
    gratifying. We have an administration that is clearly committed
    to focus on space and what we can utilize space for and what
    the dangers are and what the potential profit and benefit is.
    And especially when we have a Secretary of Commerce personally
    engaged, this has got to give a whole new energy to America's
    space efforts. And I am very proud of each and every one of you
    and proud of our President for also stepping forward in this
    way.
        I believe that we have reached a tipping point in space
    beside what I just described. And that is, we have now reached
    a time in space where we have capabilities of doing so much
    more than what we are doing today. And the private sector has
    the possibility of doing so much more because of our
    technological capabilities. But at the same time, we have
    reaching a tipping point where space debris may get in the way
    of us achieving that goal.
        So this is the first step that I have seen that we are
    taking space debris seriously and that will open the door for
    some of these other great potentials that we have.
        We have whole constellations in the private sector being
    proposed for remote sensing and observation that could be very
    profitable businesses, but we know that unless we come to grips
    with this space debris challenge, they will not be going up.
        Let me ask you this: And I appreciate the fact that we are
    now talking mainly about cataloging and bringing in even the
    private sector for helping us catalog the problem. And make
    sure we know what the problem and defining what it is. But have
    we given any thought to actually having the private sector,
    once it is cataloged, doing something about it, meaning,
    actually having the private sector help us in extracting and
    taking some of this space debris, bringing it down? I would
    just like to ask that to the panel.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Congressman, the answer is absolutely yes.
    Of course, NASA is very involved in making investments right
    now to do robotic servicing of satellites in orbit, which would
    be an absolute game changer. And when you think about the
    constellations that are going into low Earth orbit for
    communications, we are talking about thousands and thousands of
    satellites, what we don't want is each one of those satellites,
    when they become defunct, we don't want them just becoming a
    piece of space junk, right? We need to be able to either, A,
    service them, or, B, de-orbit them. And I think there are good
    plans underway for that.
        But to the extent that NASA is making these investments in
    robotics, it is not just for servicing, it could ultimately be
    for, you know, the kind of activity you are talking about,
    which would be remediation, you know, getting objects out of
    space. But that has to become, as you mentioned, you want it
    done commercially. I think that would be beneficial to
    everybody. The way it becomes available commercially is
    ultimately to do robotics for servicing of satellites, have
    half a dozen, maybe even a dozen different companies, each with
    their own constellations of a dozen or more satellites doing
    robotic servicing.
        Once they are in orbit doing this activity commercially,
    because, again, they are doing it to serve customers that are
    providing, you know, DIRECTV, Dish Network, internet broadband
    from space, they are doing it for those purposes, well, then,
    while they are there, they can also do some remediation and the
    United States Government can actually pay for that service.
        So this is an architecture that needs to be developed. NASA
    is making investments, like I said, in the robotics. We are
    making investments in rendezvous and proximity operations
    autonomy, propulsion capabilities that can have a specific
    impulse that can keep us, our satellites active for a very long
    period of time.
        So navigation, of course, the sensing that is necessary to
    do ultimately the approaches and rendezvous and proximity. So
    we are absolutely right now making investments in that
    activity. When it is going to be sufficiently mature to move
    out on what I think you are hoping that we can do, I don't have
    answer for that at this time, but certainly----
        Mr. Rohrabacher. All of you are laying the foundation
    towards the next step. And without taking care of this
    challenge, we will impede all the other great things that
    humankind is capable of.
        So thank you all. And Secretary Ross, especially thank you.
    The general is out protecting our country in so many ways, and
    this is part of it. And Secretary Ross, you are the guy who is
    going to oversee commerce in the United States, and, you know,
    this industry, the aerospace industry is a tremendous asset to
    our country, and we are relying on you to, as you are showing
    today, take leadership and keeping that a major part of our
    economy.
        Secretary Ross. Thank you, sir.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. God bless.
        Mr. Rogers. The gentleman yield back?
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Yeah. My time was up anyway.
        Mr. Rogers. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Perlmutter for 5
    minutes.
        Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, gentlemen,
    thank you for your testimony today.
        I just want to sort of get back to some basics just so I
    understand the terminology here, because we are talking about
    space situational awareness, which seems kind of wonky, and
    traffic management.
        So General, from your testimony, I understand you, the Air
    Force, Department of Defense, would be, in effect, in charge of
    the space situational awareness with your monitoring capacity.
    Is that right?
        General Hyten. Space situational awareness is a mission for
    the Department of Defense, and we will continue to do that
    mission. But it is interesting when you relate it to space
    traffic management, because the reason we started doing the
    space situational awareness mission, it was one of the--it was
    the foundation of the space control mission when I started this
    business 30-something years ago. We did it for space control.
    But when we started attaching space traffic management to it,
    we started thinking the catalog was actually to enable space
    traffic management.
        That is not why we do SSA. We do SSA to help defend
    ourselves against threats. And by having somebody else
    responsible for the space traffic management picture, the
    Department of Commerce in this case, will allow us to get back
    to using our SSA mission to focus on our space control mission,
    which is the essential piece, and somebody else will be doing
    the space traffic management. It is not that we don't have a
    role to play. We do. But that is not our focus.
        Mr. Perlmutter. But your main role is to just catalog and
    gather all of this information, which, then, you will share
    with NASA and with the Department of Commerce and other
    important agencies----
        General Hyten. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Perlmutter [continuing]. Intelligence agencies,
    whatever they may be.
        General Hyten. Exactly.
        Mr. Perlmutter. So Mr. Secretary, let me turn my
    questioning to you. So under this approach that has come out of
    the Space Council and from the administration, Commerce is in
    charge of traffic management. And so, that is a concept that is
    not so hard for me to understand, because I just think about,
    okay, who is the law enforcement? You know, who gives the
    tickets? You know, who tows the abandoned vehicle? Who plows
    the road? You know, how do these kinds of things occur. And
    some of it is going to be commercial and some of it will be
    regulatory. I mean, is that how you look at this?
        Secretary Ross. Yes, I do. And as you are probably aware,
    we already have very extensive collaboration and cooperation
    with Department of Defense in our export control activities,
    because those interface both with national defense and with our
    job as being the ones to find people who are violating
    sanctions on countries, who are planning to export militarily
    sensitive materials.
        So we have a pretty well-established vocabulary of how to
    deal, between the Department of Defense and ourselves, and this
    will just be another addition to that.
        And I agree with what the general said. One size doesn't
    fit all. There are going to have to be adjustments as we go
    along. And the technologies will evolve, new space ventures
    will evolve. You are going to get into lunar habitation, you
    may very well get into asteroid mining, all kinds of
    activities----
        Mr. Perlmutter. So I am comfortable with--I mean, somebody
    in this hierarchy has got to take the lead on if there is a
    collision, you know, whose insurance pays for it.
        Secretary Ross. Right.
        Mr. Perlmutter. You know, that kind of thing. And Mr.
    Administrator, you and I have had this conversation several
    times. What are your thoughts, just the basics of this?
        Mr. Bridenstine. A few things. As a pilot, if somebody says
    to you on the radio, ``Call sign turn right 030 descend,
    maintain 10,000 feet,'' you do it. Why? Because if you don't,
    it is illegal and you could possibly die. So that is why you do
    it.
        Right now in space, nobody has authority to compel you to
    maneuver. They can tell you, either the Department of Defense,
    the Strategic Command, can tell you it is a good idea, but they
    can't tell you to do it. So that is the difference between
    space situational awareness, and, ultimately, space traffic
    management.
        One of the challenges with space traffic management is if
    you compel somebody to maneuver, you could be burning 4 months
    of their station-keeping fuel just to prevent them from having
    a collision. And the best we can do these days, in some cases--
    not all cases, but in some cases--the best we could do is, you
    know, there is 1 in 10,000 chances that your satellite will
    collide with another satellite.
        And are you going to burn 4 months' worth of station-
    keeping fuel and give up 4 months' worth of potential revenue
    as a company in order to avoid a 1-in-10,000 chance? Now, the
    answer is you are probably not, but when you think about the
    catastrophic consequences of not maneuvering, should that 1-in-
    10,000 chance occur, you can deny access to space or at least
    make it more problematic for, you know, generations to come.
        So this is a big deal. There has to be some agency that is
    capable of doing that. Again, I want to be clear, because this
    makes a lot of space operators nervous, we want an absolute
    minimal regulatory burden with maximum regulatory certainty and
    safety.
        Mr. Perlmutter. But there has to be some kind of
    management. And I agree with that, and I yield back to the
    Chair.
        Mr. Rogers. I thank the gentleman. The Chair now recognizes
    Mr. Brooks for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Brooks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Forgive me for
    diverging from the primary focus of this hearing, but it occurs
    to me that each of you has significant persuasive influence on
    where the new Space Command will be headquartered, so I am
    going touch on that for just a moment.
        In that vein, I hope you will help make Redstone Arsenal a
    finalist in the Space Command headquarters debate. Redstone
    Arsenal has a lot to offer. We have, related to Space Command,
    either related a lot or related a little, the following Space
    Command activities: United States Army Aviation and Missile
    Command; Aviation and Missile Research, Development, and
    Engineering Center; PEO [Program Executive Office] Missiles and
    Space; United States Army Space and Missile Command; Army
    Forces Strategic Command; United States Missile Defense Agency;
    Defense Intelligence Agency Missile and Space Intelligence
    Center; NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, which is the home
    and birthplace of America's space program; a wealth of
    intellectual talent, engineers--we have the highest
    concentration of engineers in the United States of America--
    physicists, mathematicians, scientists.
        In conclusion, I hope you will concur that Redstone Arsenal
    and the Space Command seem like an excellent fit.
        Now, with that sales pitch behind me, let's go more to the
    substance of this particular hearing. I do appreciate your
    indulgence, and I know you-all all have persuasive influence on
    the ultimate outcome of that Space Command location debate.
        I know that the Department of Defense has done some interim
    work with the Federal Aviation Administration on SSA. With
    respect to Jim Bridenstine's Space Renaissance Act from last
    Congress, to put the one-stop shop for commercial space at the
    Department of Transportation, not the Department of Commerce,
    what would be your insight, your perspective on where we are
    looking at now?
        Mr. Bridenstine. A great question. As you just recognized,
    I have, in the past, sponsored legislation, authored
    legislation to have the one-stop shop be at FAA AST [Office of
    Commercial Space Transportation], especially taking AST and
    moving it out of the FAA and making it a direct report to the
    Department of Transportation, specifically to the Secretary.
        So that was legislation that I ran a couple of years ago to
    really force the conversation about this kind of activity and
    how important it is.
        Now, I would also tell you as a member of the Science
    Committee, Space Subcommittee specifically, I have voted
    multiple times on the American Space Commerce Free Enterprise
    Act, which puts this at Commerce.
        So my views on this, of course, have shifted, but I think
    more importantly than anything else, it has to be done. And to
    me, it doesn't matter so much where, just the fact that we
    don't have time to waste anymore. And if we get caught in
    whether it is a parochial issue or a jurisdictional issue among
    committees, and this thing gets held up for a year or two, we
    are at risk, especially when you consider the large
    constellations that are going to be put into low Earth orbit.
        I think Secretary Ross has made a compelling argument for
    why it should be Commerce. I fully support that, and I am ready
    to move out on it.
        Mr. Brooks. General Hyten, question for you, but first a
    comment.
        It is always good to see someone with the success that you
    have enjoyed from my hometown, Huntsville, Alabama. So any time
    you get a chance to come back, we have got over 100 generals
    who have retired there. I am sure you would be welcome, too,
    when that time comes.
        General Hyten. Are you trying to retire me, Congressman?
        Mr. Brooks. This question is for you. What is your
    assessment today of the Department of Commerce's ability to
    manage these authorities, and do they have the proper resources
    and personnel needed to manage these authorities? And if not,
    what is your opinion on what is needed to get them there?
        General Hyten. So, I guess if it is a yes-or-no question
    which you just asked, then the answer is no, they don't have
    all the things they need to do.
        But Secretary Ross realizes that, and he has committed
    inside the National Space Council, he has committed to me at
    breakfast this morning, that he is going to identify the right
    people if he has to go down this path and put those people at
    this job.
        His folks have been unbelievably transparent and helpful in
    defining what this space traffic management piece would be in
    the Department of Commerce. They have been straightforward.
        So he does not have all the issues he will need to do that
    job in the future, but he has committed to making sure he
    identifies those and pursues those. I am sure he will be
    working with you on that issue in the future.
        Mr. Brooks. Well, with respect to Secretary Ross and
    General Hyten, and, of course, Jim Bridenstine, I happen to
    serve on the--I am vice chair of the Space Subcommittee of SST
    [Science, Space, and Technology Committee], and I am also on
    the Strategic Forces Committee of House Armed Services
    Committee.
        So if there is anything I can do to help ensure that the
    Department of Commerce has the resources it needs, please let
    me know in wearing one hat or the other.
        Mr. Chairman, I yield back the remainder of my time.
        Mr. Rogers. I thank the gentleman.
        The Chair now recognizes Mr. Lamb for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Lamb. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Bridenstine, first question for you.
        You mentioned a couple times that you thought that if we
    took the lead on SSA in the United States and developed a
    better system through the Department of Commerce and worked
    with private enterprise, that that would actually give the
    United States a competitive advantage when it came to firms
    actually opening their businesses and putting their capital
    here in the future.
        Would you mind elaborating on exactly how that would work?
    Because I am just sort of picturing if what we are doing is
    really making data available, why would that actually give
    firms an incentive to locate in the United States? Or how could
    we make sure that it does, I guess?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Great question. So the idea is that we
    have companies that are international, investing, in many
    cases, billions of dollars into constellations that will be in
    low Earth orbit. And those companies are going to be looking
    for opportunities to protect their investments. How safe of a
    regime are they going to have, and certainly, they are going to
    want access to, you know, what the United States has to offer.
        Now, it is absolutely true that given the current regime
    that exists right now, the Department of Defense, through
    STRATCOM, ultimately provides space situational awareness and
    conjunction analysis to the entire world, and they do it for
    free. And they do it for free because we have to protect the
    space domain.
        I mean, if you look historically, the Department of Defense
    got into this business because they were trying to protect
    American national security interest. Well, it is still in
    America's national security interest to prevent collisions and
    more orbital debris in space.
        But I do believe that if the United States of America has a
    regime that could be commercial, and it could be led by a
    civilian agency, that a lot of companies all over the world are
    going to want to establish American companies to get the
    absolute best data for the protection of their $1 billion
    investments, or $100 million investments, big investments.
        And that, I think, is good for America. It grows the
    economy, it helps our balance of payments and our trade
    deficit, and I think that that is a big piece of what we ought
    to be doing. It also could lower insurance premiums if they
    have access to that data.
        Mr. Lamb. Does that place the onus on us, then, to make
    sure that any data-sharing from the civilian agency with
    private firms would be dependent on that private firm having an
    American presence, essentially?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So there is different levels. We talked
    about having basic SSA data that would be necessary for safety,
    in general. And then there is data that could be made available
    from commercial operators that would provide an enhanced level
    of protection, if you will. And so finding that right balance,
    I think, is important, because we want to have a competitive
    market where we are trying to get more data and better data.
        But as everybody here has agreed, it is inherently
    governmental, because ultimately, it is in everybody's interest
    to protect space. So we have to have that civil agency that is
    responsible for it ultimately.
        Mr. Lamb. Thank you. General Hyten, I just wanted to follow
    up on a point in your testimony about our adversaries, other
    countries, even some of our allies making increasing
    investments in space at the same time. Can you talk about any
    of those to the extent you are able here that should concern us
    or that make the space more competitive than we might realize,
    investments being made by other countries?
        General Hyten. So both China and Russia have invested
    enormous amounts of their national treasure to build
    capabilities for the sole purpose of countering the United
    States advantage in space. They built ground-based
    capabilities, space-based capabilities, a variety of different
    technologies that I can't go into in this hearing. But enormous
    amounts of their treasure with the sole purpose, it is not for
    something going on in the Western Pacific, it is nothing for
    going on--the sole purpose is to counter the United States
    advantages in space.
        And as the commander responsible for defending the Nation
    in that domain, I have to look at those capabilities as real
    threats. And that means I have to develop counters to those
    threats, which is why the first thing I have to have, just like
    in any other domain, is exquisite situational awareness of what
    is happening in that domain so I can respond quickly enough.
    That is the same in air, land, sea. It is the same in space.
        Mr. Lamb. Are they spending more than us in any of these
    domains, General, or just more than they have in the past?
        General Hyten. I can't go into specifics, but in certain
    areas they are investing more than we are. Our capabilities are
    so huge, enormous, powerful that the capabilities they have
    really can't impact us today. But what we have to make sure is
    that 10 years from now, 20 years from now that is still the
    same. That is the challenge.
        Mr. Lamb. Thank you very much.
        And thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
        Mr. Rogers. I thank the gentleman.
        At this point, we are going to pause for a minute. While we
    very much appreciate Secretary Ross and his participation in
    this hearing has been very helpful, he has been called to the
    White House. So we are going to excuse the Secretary and take
    any further questions for him for the record, and allow him 10
    days to provide a written response to the member who has a
    question. And with that, thank you, Mr. Ross, and you are
    excused.
        Secretary Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Rogers. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
    Louisiana, Mr. Higgins, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Gentlemen, thank you for your service to your country.
    Administrator Bridenstine, you display a tremendous amount of
    common sense, which makes it very clear why you are no longer
    in Congress.
        You gentlemen have provided excellent testimony in a very
    fascinating time in our history of mankind where space has
    clearly become a theater of engagement militarily, while at the
    same time is a new frontier for tremendous expansion of
    commercial activity.
        We have models like this, of course, throughout the history
    of man, there has never been a theater of engagement that did
    not include civilian commercial activity, be it by land, sea,
    or air. So the models of the past, as they help us to plan for
    the future, I believe we are on the right track here, because
    the DOD needs to handle defense and warfare capabilities in any
    theater of engagement. And to divest itself--and it is
    understandable why over the last, you know, several decades,
    DOD has become deeply involved, it is obvious that cataloging
    the activities in space, because of the responsibility of
    recognizing space as a theater of engagement, it is
    understandable why this has happened and got to this point,
    where DOD is doing a tremendous amount of activity that pulls
    it away from warfare capabilities. And it makes sense that at
    this juncture we would divest some of those responsibilities to
    the appropriate agency.
        So with respect to my colleagues on both sides of the
    aisle, I believe what we endeavor to determine with absolute
    certainty is which civilian agency is appropriate to relieve
    that burden from DOD. So it has been suggested, and I am
    leaning yes to concur, that the Department of Commerce is that
    agency.
        So General, is this a good idea? Is this a win for America
    and for the defense of our Nation?
        General Hyten. So, Congressman, this is actually a great
    day. Probably should have said that earlier on. Because this is
    a day that we have been looking for for a long time. We have
    had interesting dynamics. The first time you see a collision
    between a piece of debris and a Chinese satellite, what are you
    supposed to do?
        Well, I remember that conversation, and the commander
    saying, tell them. You know, we don't want a collision to
    happen. But how is that a Department of Defense mission? And so
    we started a long time ago trying to figure out how do we do
    this differently? That shouldn't be the responsibility of the
    Department of Defense. We shouldn't be forcing our airmen,
    soldiers, Marines, to make those kinds of decisions. That is
    clearly other elements of our government.
        So we have gone back and forth where it needs to be. The
    administration has decided Commerce is the place. Secretary
    Ross has jumped in and said, I am the guy, let's go ahead and
    do that. I am all in with that. I am all in. I think that is
    the right decision. We just ought to go.
        Administrator Bridenstine said the same thing a while ago.
    We got to just go now. It is the time. We can't waste any more
    time.
        Mr. Higgins. I concur. Administrator, would you comment on
    that question, please?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Here is what I would like to share. I
    think it is an important philosophical debate, but when you
    look at the expansion of humanity, whether humanity is crossing
    the Atlantic or crossing the continents from, you know, from
    east to west, or expanding into space, if you will, it is all
    driven by commerce.
        And philosophically, if we are going to go further, it is
    going to be driven by commerce. And the resources that are
    available in space are quite frankly, they are limitless. And
    so Commerce, I think should take the helm here for that basic
    philosophical reason.
        The other thing that is important to note is that space has
    transformed all of our lives, and we are now dependent on space
    in ways we never--a lot of Americans don't recognize how
    dependent we are on space. The way we navigate, the way we
    communicate, the way we produce food, the way we produce
    energy, how we do disaster relief, predict weather, monitor the
    climate, the way we do national security and defense. All of it
    depends on space.
        In fact, the GPS signal is required for banking. If we lose
    the GPS signal, that changes. In fact, it could be catastrophic
    for our country. If you lose the GPS signal, you can't do
    banking, next thing you know there is no milk in the grocery
    store. Civil unrest. That is a huge challenge.
        So here is the important thing, going back in time when you
    think about the history of naval power, for example, Alfred
    Thayer Mahan, he was a great theorist on naval power, commerce
    ultimately results in that commerce being threatened.
        And that is what is happening right now. Our entire way of
    life is dependent on space. And our, not enemies necessarily,
    but our competitors know that, and they are developing
    capabilities to thwart our way of life.
        And so if commerce is important for the power of nations as
    Alfred Thayer Mahan said back in the 1800s, then defending that
    commerce is also important as well, or protecting that
    commerce, which is, again, why I believe it is perfectly
    legitimate and good that Commerce take the helm of providing
    space situational awareness and space traffic management.
        Mr. Higgins. Gentleman, you present a compelling argument.
    Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. I yield back.
        Mr. Rogers. I thank the gentleman. The Chair now recognizes
    the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Lucas, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And in response to your
    invitation, I have a question for Secretary Ross that I will
    submit basically noting my curiosity about as we transition to
    this new plan, since I don't see anything in the fiscal year
    2018 and 2019 budgets to help the Department of Commerce
    finance that, how they plan on addressing it. But I will submit
    that in writing.
        If I could turn now to my fellow Oklahoman, the
    administrator, Mr. Bridenstine. First of all, I promised your
    constituents I will provide the most intense oversight----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Oh my goodness.
        Mr. Lucas [continuing]. Of your life for the rest of your
    career in that role, which would be an awesome experience. Just
    taking care of my fellow Oklahomans' concerns.
        Let's talk for a moment, though, in general, if you would,
    since this summer is the 60th anniversary of the legislation
    that created your agency when the Eisenhower administration and
    our predecessors in Congress determined that we needed to have
    a civilian perspective on space exploration.
        As we talk today about what Commerce is going to do and the
    continued important mission of the Department of Defense, where
    do you envision NASA actually playing as these issues evolve
    over the coming decades?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So NASA is an agency, we do discovery and
    exploration. We do science. And, of course, we are not involved
    in national security space. We are not involved in defense. But
    certainly, we want to make sure that our assets are secure. And
    that is when you think about space situational awareness, space
    traffic management. And the fact that we have humans in orbit
    right now, we have to be very aware of the space environment
    and the risk that it poses to our astronauts.
        So I like how you framed it, Chairman Lucas, that in 1958,
    Eisenhower created NASA. He did it with an expressed intent
    that space exploration not be part of the Department of
    Defense. He wanted it intentionally separate. He wanted a
    peaceful agency that can partner with the rest of the world in
    making civilization-changing discoveries. That was his
    objective.
        And what I would say now is we don't necessarily want space
    situational awareness and space traffic management to be a
    Department of Defense specific issue. Certainly, they are going
    to do that, but they don't have to do the conjunction analysis
    and warning for the entire world for free, and not to mention
    all of the commercial operators as well.
        So I think it is important to have a civil agency capable
    of doing that, just like Eisenhower envisioned for NASA back in
    1958.
        Mr. Lucas. General, some 30-plus years ago, I had a
    conversation at a public event with a colonel who was an
    officer in, I believe, what is probably your organization now
    30 years back. And as a nonpublic official, I spent a little
    bit of time asking him a variety of questions, being
    inquisitive. And he was one of the most cautious, methodical,
    thorough officers I have seen. He said absolutely nothing.
        But I finally asked him a question, and I will ask you a
    question, the same question I asked him. How do you sleep at
    night? Thirty-some years ago he said, I sleep very well at
    night. How do you sleep at night with your responsibilities?
        General Hyten. I sleep very well.
        Mr. Lucas. Thank you for the answer I wanted.
        I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
        General Hyten. One comment on that. It is important. The
    reason I sleep well, as I mentioned in my opening statement,
    because I have 162,000 of the best and brightest that America
    has to offer that do the job every day. And they actually do
    the work. I don't do any of the work. They do the work.
        And because they are out there deployed under the ground,
    under the sea, in the air, operating in space, that should
    allow you to sleep well, because it allows me to sleep well.
        Mr. Lucas. And that is the exact point I wanted you to
    make, General, because the general public does not have an
    understanding or an appreciation for all of that. And for 30-
    plus years this important role has been fulfilled.
        Again, thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Rogers. I thank the gentleman. The Chair now recognizes
    the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Hice, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Hice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I will just say to
    the administrator, welcome back. We are honored that you are in
    the role you are in. We will miss you here, but you are the
    right person for this position at this time, and we are honored
    deeply that you are in that role. And welcome back here today.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you.
        Mr. Hice. General, let me begin with you. Just in light of
    all the conversation today, how do you prioritize the competing
    interests and needs between DOD, commercial, and SSA
    requirements?
        General Hyten. So it goes back to the discussion of a
    building block. So the building block, the essential building
    block, from my perspective, is our national security. And so
    that is the first thing that I have to worry about. Do we have
    enough information, enough situational awareness to allow me to
    exercise the authorities and responsibilities that have been
    given to me for the mission of Strategic Command and defend our
    Nation in space.
        That is the first priority. That is the priority that the
    United States Department of Defense has to pay for, has to
    understand, et cetera. We have chosen over the last 9 years,
    since the Iridium-Cosmos collision, to pay for kind of the rest
    of the world, both with resources in manpower and money to
    provide that kind of collision warning, situational awareness
    for the world because we realized after the Iridium-Cosmos
    collision in 2009, if a collision occurs it is really bad for
    the security of America and for the security of the world.
        So nobody was doing it, so we said we can do it, so we did.
    But ever since that time, we have been looking for the
    structure that will allow us to just focus on our national
    security mission and have somebody else do that. Somebody else
    also pay the resources for that additional function. Not above
    the baseline. We still have to continue to do the baseline, but
    all those other pieces from that.
        Now, the Space Policy Directive-3 designates the Department
    of Commerce is the person to step up and do that, and Secretary
    Ross has said he is the guy, he is going to step up and do
    that. And that is what we, in the Department of Defense, have
    been looking for, for a number of years. So we are happy with
    where we are right now.
        Mr. Hice. So are you saying the Department of Defense will
    be the top priority followed by SSA, then commercial? Is that
    kind of----
        General Hyten. Well, from an SSA perspective, not from a
    space traffic management perspective.
        Mr. Hice. Okay.
        General Hyten. Space traffic management should be somebody
    else's job, but we have to focus on what we need from space
    situational awareness in order to allow us to defend ourselves
    in space, and defend ourselves against any adversaries that
    might challenge us in space. That means exquisite situational
    awareness. It just so happens that that information is what is
    also needed for space traffic management.
        But we will give that data to somebody else to process, to
    do the analysis, to reach out, to reach out to nations, to
    reach out to companies. We have been doing that, and we have
    been making it up. And I am pretty proud of the folks that have
    been making that up, because it is a miracle to me that we
    haven't had a collision, but that should be somebody else's
    job.
        Mr. Hice. Then in light of that, how much currently, how
    much manpower and resources and so forth do you use when
    dedicating efforts to negotiate SSA agreements with commercial
    foreign states and so forth?
        General Hyten. So for negotiating SSA agreements, it has
    been very small.
        Mr. Hice. Okay.
        General Hyten. It is four or five people on my staff that
    do that work, and that is not their only job. They have other
    jobs that they do as well. But that is one of their additional
    duties, is to focus on that.
        Mr. Hice. Okay.
        General Hyten. But the biggest impact, though, is the
    people that have to actually do the work, the processing. That
    number is in the dozens. That is what will be offloaded to
    significant numbers that will free them up to do what I believe
    is the real warfighting missions.
        Mr. Hice. Okay. So in freeing that up, you will be able to
    better utilize it for defense purposes?
        General Hyten. Exactly.
        Mr. Hice. Mr. Administrator, I heard you bring up earlier,
    and let me just ask you this, how will the trend that is
    currently underway for small satellites affect SSA capabilities
    and beyond?
        Mr. Bridenstine. That is another great question. So every
    orbital regime is different. Of course, we have a lot of assets
    in low Earth orbit. We have a lot of assets in geostationary
    orbit. Those are two orbits that are critically important and
    they will require a space situational awareness and space
    traffic management regime that is very different than a medium
    Earth orbit or an orbit that is below low Earth orbit.
        You know, sometimes I have heard people make the argument
    that CubeSats ought to be below the International Space Station
    in order to not necessarily be regulated at all with STM or
    SSA. That if you are below the ISS, you are going to be de-
    orbiting just based on the trace atmosphere at that level
    within 5 to 10 years anyway, so we don't really need a regime.
        So what I would say is it is not necessarily the size of
    the satellite that matters, but what matters is where that
    satellite is positioned and the different orbital regimes are
    going to have different kind of requirements for, you know,
    where they are located.
        Mr. Hice. Okay. Again, thank you both, gentlemen, for all
    you do. We are honored.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Rogers. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now
    recognizes Mr. Mitchell for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Mitchell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, Mr. Bridenstine,
    I want to congratulate you on becoming the administrator. And
    thank you, as your departing the committee gave me the
    opportunity to join the committee. So congratulations. And I am
    warming your chair, I guess.
        Mr. Bridenstine. You are, indeed. Thank you for doing that.
        Mr. Mitchell. It is an honor, sir.
        Question, if you could relay to also Mr. Ross, who will
    submit to the committee.
        You had advocated as well that this, this situational
    awareness or traffic management go to the FAA. And the FAA is
    currently involved in that they certify launches, aircraft that
    are launched, they provide certification for that in this
    process.
        Can you share with me how much involvement the FAA has been
    in this process as this transition is going on, and I will ask
    the same question of Secretary Ross as well.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Sure. So I will be honest. I have been in
    Congress until about 7 or 8 weeks ago, so I wasn't part of all
    the negotiations that got to the point where we were ready to
    announce SPD-3, so I do know that FAA was involved. There were
    meetings in the National Space Council where this discussion
    was had.
        How robust it was and who said what and when, I am not 100
    percent sure. But I can tell you that everybody is in agreement
    that I have talked to that this has to be done in a civil
    agency.
        Mr. Mitchell. Agreed.
        Mr. Bridenstine. And, you know, Commerce is a good place to
    do it. It is also important to note, as Secretary Ross noted,
    that Commerce is involved in space in a robust way already. A
    lot of people don't realize the National Oceanic and
    Atmospheric Administration, about 40 percent of their budget is
    space-related activities. And, of course, that is controlled by
    Commerce. And ultimately, they make purchases for those
    activities, and NASA is involved in buying a lot of their
    satellites, or at least doing a lot of the requirements
    generation and then the activities that are necessary to
    acquire those satellites.
        So NASA is involved in that. But it is a Commerce function.
    It is also important to note that Commerce is involved in
    remote sensing licensing, and that kind of activity. So there
    is a lot of activities that are done both in Commerce and the
    FAA.
        A couple of years ago when I drafted that bill, you know,
    my thought was, we will put it at FAA and we will take
    everything and put it at FAA. It appears now that the right
    course of action given the consensus that has been come to is
    that it be at Commerce. And I fully support that. The key is,
    it needs to be done. That needs to happen.
        Mr. Mitchell. I agree that does need to be done.
        One of the questions I have, as you well know, is space and
    commercial FAA-type traffic isn't a clean division. There is
    clearly, and I have talked with several folks involved, SpaceX
    and others. There is an overlap of that. How do you reconcile
    and maybe, General, you have some feedback, how do you
    reconcile that or make it work?
        Mr. Bridenstine. I will take it real quick. There are a lot
    of seams here that are critically important. As you mentioned,
    if you are going to get to space, you are going to have to go
    through the National Airspace System, number one. Then when you
    get to space, eventually you are going to potentially de-orbit
    if you are in low Earth orbit.
        And so in each of these cases, you are going to be taking
    advantage of the National Airspace System. One of the
    challenges that we have right now is when a launch occurs, the
    National Airspace System for a geographic region gets shut down
    for a number of hours and commercial air traffic has to go
    around it. And it costs a lot of money and puts a big burden on
    industry.
        We want that to shrink. So whether it is launch or a whole
    host of other activities, Commerce is going to have to work
    with FAA and vice versa. And so these seams have to be really
    well thought out and we need to prepare for them, but that is
    going to happen regardless of where it is. Commerce and FAA are
    going to have to work together to make it happen.
        Mr. Mitchell. Agreed. My concern was, I admit, I sit on TI
    [Transportation and Infrastructure Committee], and I am on the
    Aviation Subcommittee.
        Mr. Bridenstine. There you go.
        Mr. Mitchell. I didn't see here, and I would encourage some
    description of how actually you engage with the FAA on this
    because I think there is, not just launch, but, in fact,
    failure of a launch, that area needs to be closed. All the
    risks and factors affect that civil aviation, that airspace
    now.
        General, do you have anything you wish to add to that, sir?
        General Hyten. So I agree with the administrator. The key
    there is when it comes to space, every element of the
    government is involved. Some in big ways, some in small ways,
    which means there is always going to be seams. So the way you
    handle seams is with clear authorities and responsibilities.
    And the authority to the Secretary of Defense is to defend the
    Nation. The authority to the Commerce is to promote commerce.
        Now, you have to decide, for this space traffic management,
    where is the best place to put the authority? The
    administration has decided the Department of Commerce is the
    best place to put that. But that doesn't mean that--the FAA
    still has a role, the Department of Defense still has a role,
    NASA still has a role. We all are going to have roles as we go
    through this, but we all have to align under some--because if
    we don't, we will just keep doing it.
        Mr. Mitchell. I appreciate that. And I would suggest that
    maybe a little more clarity, and I will share with Secretary
    Ross as well, in terms of what those seams are and that role of
    the FAA so that we don't end up losing something there. I think
    it would be critically important.
        I appreciate your answers. And I yield back, Mr. Chair.
        Mr. Rogers. I thank the gentleman.
        The Chair now recognize Mr. Beyer for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General, Administrator,
    thanks so much for being with us all morning.
        Administrator Bridenstine, I am very impressed with the
    many things NASA is doing in the space. The new Space Fence
    radar; the NASA Orbital Debris Engineering Model which predicts
    what is coming in the next 30 to 35 years; the LEO-to-GEO [low
    Earth orbit to geosynchronous Earth orbit] Environment Debris
    model, LEGEND, which looks at what the environment is going to
    be like in 100 to 200 years.
        Can you tell us what LEGEND tells us about this 100 to 200
    year? Is space going to become ever more crowded and ever more
    dangerous?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Absolutely. So just to be clear, Space
    Fence is not a NASA project; it is a DOD project. But we
    certainly will benefit from it. I am a little concerned that we
    are going to learn about so much space debris that our
    astronauts are going to be sheltering in place a lot more than
    they are right now. In fact, we haven't sheltered in place
    since 2015.
        Once we have more situational awareness on all the debris
    that is out there, it could--you know, once you know what you
    need to be worried about, you get more worried about it. So
    there is a concern there on my end.
        Mr. Beyer. Administrator, let me ask you the most naive
    question of the morning. Is there anything we can do to collect
    the debris that is out there?
        Mr. Bridenstine. There are certain technologies that are
    being developed. NASA, of course, is involved in robotic
    servicing of satellites. It is a project we have right now
    underway that is called Restore-L, and we are going to service
    a Landsat-7 satellite, which is a good project.
        But ultimately, if we want to do robotic servicing in a way
    that is beneficial to our country and game-changing, we need to
    develop robotic technologies that can then be licensed to a
    dozen companies, and each of those companies could have a dozen
    satellites in low Earth orbit doing robotic servicing of
    satellites. When we get to that position, it is absolutely
    possible that we could hire some of those commercial companies
    to remove orbital debris.
        So that is certainly within the realm of possibility and a
    futuristic kind of thought, a futuristic kind of thinking about
    how to deal with the orbital debris population.
        Mr. Beyer. It would certainly, if you look at that 30 to 35
    years or 100 to 200 years. I am working on the assumption that
    mankind is going to put ever more debris up there year after
    year.
        Mr. Bridenstine. That is true. It is also true that the
    biggest risk to missions in low Earth orbit, the biggest risk
    is from objects that are too small to even track. So we can
    kind of create a statistical model as to what the environment
    looks like and create probabilities about how long a satellite
    can last in low Earth orbit, given the pelting that it is going
    to receive from debris, and how much shielding it might need to
    have.
        So we can create those statistical models. But ultimately,
    the biggest risk is from objects that we can't even track right
    now. So it is going to be hard to remove them if we don't know
    that they are there specifically.
        Mr. Beyer. Mr. Administrator, I know you have a hard
    science background with your triple major at Rice. Is there any
    value to the orbital degradation of the stuff or is it just too
    small to have the orbits degrade in our lifetimes?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Oh, they do degrade, especially in low
    Earth orbit. There is trace atmosphere. The gravity of the
    Earth is not uniform. And so we see a lot of these objects
    behaving in ways that sometimes are unanticipated.
        I know Dr. Moriba Jah was here just a few minutes ago from
    the University of Texas. He talks about the fact that a lot of
    these objects in space that are not even trackable or the
    objects that are trackable, we model them as if they are all
    perfect spheres, and they are not. We model them as if they
    don't spin or maneuver, and they do. We model them as if the
    Earth's gravity is perfectly uniform, and it's not.
        So there is a lot we need to learn about orbital debris and
    how it behaves so that ultimately we can get better data to
    ultimately make predictions and characterizations that can
    protect our assets and property.
        But you are hitting some very key points, which are it is a
    dangerous environment, we need to do the best we can to
    characterize that environment, and ultimately we need to be
    able to detect objects that are smaller than 10 centimeters,
    which is what we can do right now.
        Mr. Beyer. Let me ask you a small but probably important
    budget question. In your testimony, you talked about the
    Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis office----
        Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
        Mr. Beyer [continuing]. At Goddard, which I am sure you are
    very proud of, and that they have the primary role of checking
    65 spacecraft, et cetera, et cetera. Its budget is $4 million a
    year, and yet we know the rest of the things you are putting up
    there are billions of dollars. Are we spending enough money on
    the CARA office?
        Mr. Bridenstine. I think we are. Certainly, more money is
    better, but given the risk that we are seeing to our missions
    and their ability to assess those risks and then make
    determinations for maneuvers as necessary, I believe we are in
    a good position right now with the investments that we have.
        Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Mr. Administrator.
        I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Rogers. I thank the gentleman.
        The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Mr.
    Dunn, for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Administrator Bridenstine, Jim, it is great to see you
    here. I have a couple of questions about the services currently
    provided. So the Space Policy Directive reaffirmed the basic
    collision avoidance information services are and should
    continue to be provided free of user fees. Can you confirm that
    that is so going forward?
        Mr. Bridenstine. That is a big objective, again, because it
    is important for the United States of America to be preeminent
    here in this capability, and we want companies to locate in the
    United States believing that they are going to have these kind
    of services available through a civil agency. So I believe
    basic SSA is important for the safety of the space environment
    in general.
        Mr. Dunn. As do my constituents.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Okay, good.
        Mr. Dunn. In that same vein, if the government contracts
    with a private company to provide space situational awareness
    functions, in that situation will the data and the analytics
    continue to be available and will the raw data be available in
    repository form so that civilian companies can perform their
    own analytics?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So that is a wonderful question and not an
    easy one, but eventually the way I think it is going to go is
    there is going to be a basic SSA kind of capability that is
    available to everybody, and it will be without fee, which I
    think is important.
        But there are also going to be private companies that are
    going to want to give advantages to other private companies
    operating in space. And in order to provide that advantage,
    they are going to license their data to a private company and
    the U.S. Government might not have access to that.
        So that presents an opportunity for commercial companies to
    augment data and get better resolution, higher resolution. And
    really in a free market, you know, the United States Government
    can't confiscate that data.
        So I think there is going to be an architecture that is
    going to have a basic SSA capability, and then there are also
    going to be commercial companies that can come alongside and
    provide that to operators, maybe in their model. Other people
    might want to develop sensors and data and sell it directly to
    the government. That might be a model as well.
        Mr. Dunn. So specifically, can you address the raw data
    that the government currently gathers? Would that raw data be
    available to private companies?
        Mr. Bridenstine. It would be available to the public. Any
    government data would be available to the public. And right
    now, that data generally comes from STRATCOM through the JSpOC.
        Mr. Dunn. Let me ask you. Maybe I should have asked the
    general, he is holding that. But let me ask, what was the
    rationale for assigning the Department of Commerce, not NASA,
    as the lead civil agency for space situational awareness?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So NASA is an agency that does science and
    technology. We do discovery. We do exploration. What we don't
    do is regulate. That is historic----
        Mr. Dunn. I think that is good. I just wanted to get you on
    record, because I actually agree with that decision. I just
    wanted to get it out.
        General Hyten, space is being designated as a warfighting
    domain as well as a commercial domain. Where do you see the
    trend in space control sort of evolving for DOD in space
    situational awareness?
        General Hyten. It is interesting, because as the combatant
    commander with space as my joint operating area, I actually
    have two priorities and some people think they conflict.
        Priority number one is to defend this Nation against all
    threats. That means I have to be able to watch any threat, deal
    with any threat, defeat any threat. And I do that.
        But I also have an implied task that says I have to make
    sure that the space environment is safe for the future, because
    anything bad that happens in space, it is not like we were
    talking about cleaning up the environment a while ago. It is
    not like you can just go out right now and clean it up. You
    know, if you have a collision in space, the impacts are
    forever. So there is an implied task that I have to be able to
    operate safely in order to do that.
        That is why for the last 9 years we have stepped up to the
    job of providing that for the world. We will continue to do
    that until, hopefully, the Department of Commerce steps up in
    the near term to do that for us, because it is in our interest
    as a Nation to have a secure space environment.
        Mr. Dunn. I couldn't agree with you more, and I think you
    have done a great job. I hope you continue to have a great
    presence there.
        A comment. I was looking when I saw that Space Policy
    Directive Number 3 came out, I said, what were 1 and 2? So I
    had a chance to go back and look at that. And, you know, the
    SPD-1 was let's go to the moon and Mars. SPD-2 was let's
    streamline the space regulatory environment. And now I am
    looking at SPD-3 and I am looking at all the things it
    addresses, and my staff summed that up well for me. They said,
    just make space great again.
        Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
        Mr. Rogers. I thank the gentleman.
        The Chair now recognizes Mr. Foster for 5 minutes.
        Mr. Foster. Thank you to our witnesses, and congratulations
    to Administrator Bridenstine.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you.
        Mr. Foster. Nice to have you back. I would like, if you
    could, to speak a little bit about how you are viewing the
    international governance and enforcement of space commerce. You
    know, the United States is not alone. I think it's, you know,
    the rest of the world has roughly a comparable number of
    orbiting devices and that ratio is going to change over time.
        And so do you anticipate a future where every country
    pretty much goes its own way and regulates its own commerce and
    we have to worry about a race to the bottom for the lowest
    level of regulation which will be the lowest cost for
    multinational corporations, or do you anticipate that the U.S.
    regulator will serve underneath and be potentially overridden
    by an international body with regulation over all space
    activities?
        Mr. Bridenstine. That is a great question, Congressman.
    Currently, in some orbital regimes, the International
    Telecommunications Union, the ITU, which is a part of the
    United Nations, does license orbital slots for the
    international community. And, of course, American companies are
    involved in getting their orbital slots from the ITU. The ITU
    is also involved in allocating spectrum for commercial
    operators. So there is already an international component
    there.
        Maybe where at this point it is insufficient is what is
    happening largely in low Earth orbit, where there is a whole
    lot more debris and a whole lot more risk, I should say.
        And the answer is, right now there isn't that kind of
    international oversight in low Earth orbit the way there is in
    geostationary orbit. And what I would say is I think the
    direction we should go is we should set those standards, and
    NASA has a history of doing this.
        Mr. Foster. Right. But there is the enforcement problem
    when someone goes to a country that is not setting those
    standards, puts stuff up in space. Who says no and how is that
    enforced?
        Mr. Bridenstine. It is done through the ITU, which is----
        Mr. Foster. I mean, look at the South China Sea, right?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Right. No, that is right.
        Mr. Foster. You know, an international body clearly spoke
    and said that is not an acceptable activity, and a certain
    country that will remain nameless sort of is ignoring that.
    When that recurs in space, what is the scenario here that you
    are thinking of?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So as a pilot in the Navy, I used to
    operate in the Persian Gulf, and we would get challenged by
    various countries and they would say, you are operating in the
    wrong part of the world or whatever.
        And we would always go back and say, under ICAO procedures,
    the International Civil Aviation Organization, that we were a
    sovereign U.S. aircraft operating in international airspace,
    due regard. And that word ``due regard'' is ultimately what
    protects us from challenges from the international community.
        And I would argue that, you know, as it relates to us right
    now in space, we operate due regard. And I would say that as
    time goes on, American leadership might need to be a little
    stronger here so that ultimately we don't have collisions that
    beget more collisions.
        Mr. Foster. Okay. But what happens when two countries start
    fighting over mining the same asteroid or things like that? You
    know, is there any alternative to an international governance
    organization? And if there is not, why are we not prioritizing
    that first, to get that structure in place and get the U.S.
    regulators plugged into it?
        Mr. Bridenstine. I think the model that we utilize right
    now--and, of course, this is established through the Outer
    Space Treaty, where----
        Mr. Foster. Many countries are not signatories to the Outer
    Space Treaty, they have not ratified it, important countries,
    you know, like China, like others I could name.
        Mr. Bridenstine. Sure. So certainly that requires
    international pressure to get them to conform to the
    international standards.
        Mr. Foster. So is your concept here that U.S. regulation
    will be secondary to international regulation, or that we are
    just going to go make up our own rules?
        Mr. Bridenstine. I think we adhere to the treaties that are
    currently in place, specifically the Outer Space Treaty. And as
    long as, you know, we are operating under the obligations of
    our international treaty----
        Mr. Foster. Right. Which are incomplete and there will have
    to be detailed regulations. For example, if you look at
    cybersecurity, you can't have people put up swarms of
    satellites without enough cybersecurity that ensures they can't
    be hacked and use their station-keeping ability to go and, you
    know, knock out the ISS, or any of these sort of scenarios.
        There will have to be international standards on, for
    example, cybersecurity for any satellite with station-keeping
    ability. Okay. And there will be different--countries will have
    different opinions on that. If some country thinks that the
    U.S. standards are not high enough and we say no, that is too
    expensive, how do you anticipate that that decision will be
    handled?
        Mr. Bridenstine. So as far as your earlier suggestion that
    if we mine an asteroid and maybe somebody else wants to mine
    the same asteroid and that could result in a dispute, I think
    the odds of that are exceptionally small, but I think also at
    the same time we can operate due regard. And whoever extracts
    the resource has the rights to the resource under the Outer
    Space Treaty, which we are signatories to.
        Mr. Foster. All right. Well, I guess my time is up here.
    But, you know, I really urge you to think more about the
    international--you know, the idea that America acting alone is
    a reasonable model to proceed is not going to work. You know,
    50 years from now, the majority of objects in orbit are not
    going to be U.S. objects and we are not going to dominate space
    in the long term, and we should start planning for that and
    accept it rather than just pretending like the world is not
    changing.
        Mr. Bridenstine. I would argue that we are in compliance
    with our obligations under the Outer Space Treaty and other
    treaties, and that ultimately we will----
        Mr. Foster. Yeah, but we have to get all the countries on
    Earth to do this or it is not going to be too meaningful. And
    that is the thing that worries me. And we have to start by
    strengthening those agreements and making them uniform, and I
    don't see a lot of effort on this administration in plugging
    into a strong international regulatory regime.
        Mr. Bridenstine. There isn't a strong international
    regulatory regime.
        Mr. Foster. And that should be prioritized.
        I am over my time. I yield back.
        Mr. Bridenstine. And so we need to have American
    leadership.
        Mr. Rogers. The gentleman yields back.
        And that brings us to the conclusion of this hearing. I did
    want to point out that we had members having to come and go. So
    some members may have some questions they need to get to you
    all. So we are going to leave the record open for 10 days, if
    you could respond to those in writing.
        And also make note of something else. This is a very
    important area of interest, and that is demonstrated by the
    fact that we had 30 Members of Congress participate in this
    joint subcommittee hearing today, many of whom weren't even on
    the two subcommittees. And combined with if you went outside, 2
    hours before this hearing the line started forming to get in
    here. That usually only happens when the chiefs are here or the
    Secretary. People care about what you do. And we are very proud
    that we have got two competent individuals such as you serving
    in the roles that you have.
        So thank you for being here. It has been very helpful. This
    hearing is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 11:16 a.m., the subcommittees were
    adjourned.]

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                                A P P E N D I X

                                 June 22, 2018

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                  PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

                                 June 22, 2018

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    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

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                  QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING

                                 June 22, 2018

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                       QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. COFFMAN

        Mr. Coffman. Regarding the transition of civil oriented Space
    Situational Awareness (SSA) services from USSTRATCOM to the Department
    of Commerce (DOC), as suggested in the House Science Committee's
    legislation a. How will the handoff occur and what is the estimated
    timeframe for such a transition? What criteria will be used to
    determine that the civil DOC SSA system is ready for operations? b.
    Will the current USSTRATCOM SSA system be available as a backup to the
    civil DOC SSA system, and vice versa? Will USSTRATCOM space object
    tracking sensors, including the Space Fence, be used by the civil DOC
    SSA system? If so, how will the military sensors be integrated with the
    DOC? c. How will all global satellite owner/operators be incentivized
    to participate in the civil DOC SSA and Space Traffic Coordination
    (STC) programs?
        General Hyten. Although a timeframe and detailed specifics of
    transitioning inherently non-military space traffic management
    functions to the DOC are still being finalized, USSTRATCOM has fully
    partnered with the DOC, to ensure a smooth, efficient and most
    importantly, safe hand-off. By year-end, both Departments will jointly
    provide a progress report to the National Space Council detailing
    requirements for a successful transition . . . to include a timeline
    for transition, a construct for managing the provision of basic SSA
    data; assessing the statutory and regulatory changes required; and
    maintaining the US space catalog while making portions releasable (via
    DOC) to the public.
        b. USSTRATCOM will continue to maintain the authoritative US space
    catalog and to provide military-unique SSA services upon DOC developing
    its indigenous STM capabilities. As part of this effort, we will
    investigate providing backup capabilities for DOC. The DOC will make
    publically available portions of the authoritative catalog which DOD
    will continue to maintain. We expect a variety of DOD, civil, Allied,
    and commercial sensors will contribute data which will be used to form
    DOC's publically releasable catalog.
        c. We anticipate global satellite owner/operators wanting to
    leverage DOC capabilities out of their own best interest just as they
    use the USSTRATCOM capabilities today. This information will preserve
    their ability to utilize the space domain while minimizing the risk
    from orbital debris.
        Mr. Coffman. We have very important assets in my district that
    contribute to the Space Situational Awareness mission, and it is clear
    that DOD's SSA requirements will be increasing in the future given our
    space control plans. How will the administration's new Space Traffic
    Management Policy help you better prioritize DOD resources to meet DOD
    requirements?
        General Hyten. While many details concerning the increased
    Department of Commerce role in SSA remain under development, by moving
    any inherently non-military activities to a civil agency I will be able
    to re-prioritize my resources to focus on meeting DOD requirements.
    These include:
          Strengthen intelligence collection, analysis, and sharing
    to effectively assess potential adversary space, counterspace
    capabilities vulnerabilities and intentions
          Acquire enhanced SSA capabilities and leverage commercial
    and allied/partner capabilities to provide Indications & Warning (I &
    W) of objects in space
          Achieve full operational capability of the National Space
    Defense Center and continue development of infrastructure to allow
    command and control of space warfighting capabilities
          Pivot SSA capabilities from routine catalog maintenance
    to more dynamic, search-based situational awareness with increased
    focus on potential hostile activity. This will enhance our ability to
    Protect and Defend the space domain and provide space effects for
    warfighters around the world
          Deter, and-when necessary--defeat adversary space and
    counterspace threats.
        Mr. Coffman. Given that the DOD has already negotiated more than 60
    different agreements with commercial and international entities, what
    is your plan to smoothly transfer those contracts to the Department of
    Commerce to minimize service disruption? Do you believe that you will
    need to maintain mil-to-mil agreements for SSA, how are you thinking
    about that framework of international military cooperation in the SSA
    realm for the future? a. What is your assessment today of the
    Department of Commerce's ability to manage these authorities? Do they
    have the proper resources and personnel and what is your opinion on
    what is needed to get them there? b. What are the implications of an
    immediate move of these situational space awareness (SSA) authorities
    from DOD to the Department of Commerce? Are you concerned that hiccups
    in a transition may damage the United States position as the lead
    provider of global SSA?
        General Hyten. As of 21 Sep 18, USSTRATCOM has 88 agreements with
    governments, commercial satellite owner operations, and service
    providers. For military-to-military agreements, USSTRATCOM will
    continue to have a significant role, however, many SSA sharing
    agreements are not inherently military. Consequently, USSTRATCOM is
    working closely with the Department of Commerce (DOC) to ensure an
    efficient and smooth transition of these non-military U.S. agreements
    with civil and commercial spacefarers. Though many details remain under
    development, a future where the DOC is responsible for negotiating,
    concluding, and executing SSA sharing agreements with commercial
    entities is indeed achievable. While DOC grows its capabilities,
    USSTRATCOM is fully committed to supporting our commercial, civil and
    international partners. We have no intention of transferring these
    responsibilities before DOC is prepared to take them on. I am not
    concerned about the transition because I have faith in the men and
    women executing this mission.
        Mr. Coffman. Are you concerned this new need for space funding will
    cannibalize from NASA budgets?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Space Policy Directive-3 (SPD-3), National Space
    Traffic Management Policy, recognizes that after more than 60 years of
    human space activities, orbital debris has become a serious problem to
    space operations. SPD-3 highlighted the need to advance space
    situational awareness and improve the fundamental knowledge of the
    space environment, such as the characterization of small debris. NASA
    will continue to prioritize requirements within available budget
    constraints, while striving to achieve SPD-3 objectives.
        Mr. Coffman. Regarding the transition of civil oriented Space
    Situational Awareness (SSA) services from USSTRATCOM to the Department
    of Commerce (DOC), as suggested in the House Science Committee's
    legislation, a. How will the handoff occur and what is the estimated
    timeframe for such a transition? What criteria will be used to
    determine that the civil DOC SSA system is ready for operations? b.
    Will the current USSTRATCOM SSA system be available as a backup to the
    civil DOC SSA system, and vice versa? Will USSTRATCOM space object
    tracking sensors, including the Space Fence, be used by the civil DOC
    SSA system? If so, how will the military sensors be integrated with the
    DOC? c. How will all global satellite owner/operators be incentivized
    to participate in the civil DOC SSA and Space Traffic Coordination
    (STC) programs?
        Secretary Ross. [The information was not available at the time of
    printing.]
        Mr. Coffman. Given that the DOD has already negotiated more than 60
    different agreements with commercial and international entities, what
    is your plan to smoothly transfer those contracts to the Department of
    Commerce to minimize service disruption? Do you believe that you will
    need to maintain mil-to-mil agreements for SSA, how are you thinking
    about that framework of international military cooperation in the SSA
    realm for the future? a. What is your assessment today of the
    Department of Commerce's ability to manage these authorities? Do they
    have the proper resources and personnel and what is your opinion on
    what is needed to get them there? b. What are the implications of an
    immediate move of these situational space awareness (SSA) authorities
    from DOD to the Department of Commerce? Are you concerned that hiccups
    in a transition may damage the United States position as the lead
    provider of global SSA?
        Secretary Ross. [The information was not available at the time of
    printing.]
        Mr. Coffman. How much will this new program cost in year one, and
    how will these costs grow in the out-years?
        Secretary Ross. [The information was not available at the time of
    printing.]
                                     ______

                       QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. HUNTER
        Mr. Hunter. The 2013 National Space Transportation Policy calls for
    the use of U.S. rockets for U.S. government payloads, with some minor
    exceptions that perhaps should be revisited anyway. President Trump's
    Space Policy Directive-2 directs the executive branch to ``encourage
    American leadership in space'' and ``promote economic growth.'' The
    U.S. currently has a competitive space launch industry, yet NASA
    payloads continue to fly on foreign launch vehicles, even those that
    are subsidized by foreign governments. Could NASA better promote the
    goals of the National Space Transportation Policy and Space Policy
    Directive 2 by using American rockets to launch American satellites?
    Should we have a ``Buy American, Fly American'' policy?
        General Hyten, as DOD looks to purchase more commercial data and
    services, do you agree that these should be purchased from entities
    that launch from American spaceports?
        General Hyten. The U.S. operates in a unique and contested space
    domain where all opportunities must be utilized. This includes
    leveraging our partner nations, if necessary, to increase
    responsiveness and capabilities. While I firmly believe the nation
    should maintain the ability to launch a vast majority of its payloads,
    such restrictions may limit the responsiveness and capabilities
    necessary to meet increasingly dynamic DOD requirements. The
    President's National Strategy for Space addresses this issue. It
    stipulates the National Space Council develop a plan to remove
    barriers, streamline regulations, and reduce bureaucratic hurdles to
    commercial space companies, taking into account national security/
    public safety. Furthermore, the strategy directs Departments and
    Agencies to ``promote conditions that result in a thriving and
    competitive domestic space industry'' and ``ensure the health of the
    industrial base to support required activities while protecting
    critical U.S. technologies and capabilities.''
        Mr. Hunter. Administrator Bridenstine, the 2013 National Space
    Transportation Policy calls for the use of U.S. rockets for U.S.
    government payloads, with some minor exceptions that perhaps should be
    revisited anyway. President Trump's Space Policy Directive-2 directs
    the executive branch to ``encourage American leadership in space'' and
    ``promote economic growth.'' The U.S. currently has a competitive space
    launch industry, yet NASA payloads continue to fly on foreign launch
    vehicles, even those that are subsidized by foreign governments. Could
    NASA better promote the goals of the National Space Transportation
    Policy and Space Policy Directive-2 by using American rockets to launch
    American satellites? Should we have a ``Buy American, Fly American''
    policy?
        Mr. Bridenstine. NASA believes existing statute and policy supports
    a ``Buy American Fly American'' objective. NASA complies with 51 USC
    50131, the 2013 National Space Transportation Policy, and Space Policy
    Directive-2 for the launch services it procures and uses in support of
    Agency payload missions, with regard to both the launch vehicle and the
    provider of the launch service. 51 USC Sec. 50131 requires the U.S.
    Government to procure space transportation services from domestic
    commercial providers, with a few specific exceptions. The National
    Space Policy also requires the U.S. Government to use U.S. commercial
    space transportation services. NASA procures launch services in
    accordance with existing law and policy. In addition, NASA does not buy
    foreign launch vehicles for the launch of its satellites or science
    missions. United States Government payloads are to be launched on space
    launch vehicles manufactured in the United States, unless exempted by
    the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the
    Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs through an
    interagency process. This policy, however, does not apply to use of
    foreign launch vehicles on a no-exchange-of-funds basis to support the
    following: flight of scientific instruments on foreign spacecraft,
    international scientific programs, or other cooperative government-to-
    government programs. A primary example of the application of this
    exception is the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), for which the
    European Space Agency (ESA) has agreed to provide an Ariane 5 launcher
    and associated launch services to NASA as part of the European
    contribution to the mission.
                                     ______

                      QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. MITCHELL
        Mr. Mitchell. Administrator Bridenstine, you testified that the
    Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has already been involved in
    discussions about Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and Space Traffic
    Management (STM). Can you detail how the National Aeronautical and
    Space Administration has worked with the Department of Transportation
    and the FAA previously--both during your tenure and before
        Mr. Bridenstine. The FAA has held informal discussions with NASA,
    among other space operators, about the Agency's internal methods for
    conjunction assessment risk analysis for both robotic and human
    spacecraft. However, these information exchanges were all informal;
    there is no formal agreement between NASA and the FAA focused on SSA or
    STM activities.
        Mr. Mitchell. You testified that you support the Department of
    Commerce leading this mission as Space Policy Directive-3 calls for,
    but you also acknowledged that the FAA has special expertise in
    managing air traffic already. How does your agency intend to work with
    the FAA on SSA and STM moving forward?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Under the auspices of SPD-3, NASA is leading an
    interagency effort to update the U.S. Government Orbital Debris
    Mitigation Standard Practices so that that regulatory agencies--
    Departments of Transportation and Commerce or the Federal
    Communications Commission--have a sound scientific and technical basis
    for developing orbital debris mitigation policies and regulations for
    their respective commercial licensing regimes. NASA also has expertise
    in conjunction assessment risk analysis within our human and robotic
    space missions and will provide inputs relative to best practices to
    help inform DOT and DOC efforts.
        Mr. Mitchell. General Hyten testified that when it comes to space,
    every element of the government is involved and that means there are
    going to be seams. He said that the seams are best addressed by
    establishing clear authorities and responsibilities. Can you provide
    more detail on how authorities and responsibilities are going to be
    handled among the partners identified in Space Policy Directive-3,
    especially the Department of Transportation?
        Mr. Bridenstine. NASA would respectfully defer to the SPD-3, the
    first National Space Traffic Management Policy for a detailed and
    comprehensive outline of roles and responsibilities within the
    interagency, both currently and in future, as the Department of Defense
    transitions some roles to the Department of Commerce. The Department of
    Transportation will retain its current role of regulation of commercial
    launch, landing and spaceports.
        Mr. Mitchell. Both space and traditional commercial airspace
    traffic have some interplay, how are you resolving that issue? How are
    you working with FAA to address that specific seam?
        Mr. Bridenstine. Launch and landing are where spaceflight
    interfaces with the U.S. National Airspace and its air traffic. NASA is
    a partner in a four-agency coordination group (Air Force Space Command,
    National Reconnaissance Office, FAA, NASA) that consider, among other
    launch and landing topics, how to address joint use between the launch
    ranges and the National Airspace as the number of commercial launch
    ranges and the frequency of commercial space launches is expected to
    increase.
        Mr. Mitchell. How does NASA envision Space Situational Awareness
    and Space Traffic Management playing out in practice? Will this be
    handled by a government agency or is this an authority that could be
    given to another type of non-governmental entity?
        Mr. Bridenstine. The SPD-3 outlines a thoughtful and practical
    approach for implementing an improved future construct for Space
    Traffic Management, including Space Situational Awareness. SPD-3 does
    not limit involvement in STM and SSA activities and products to
    government agencies. As with any proposed approach, NASA and the rest
    of the interagency will make adjustments along the way as appropriate
    and as circumstances warrant.
        Mr. Mitchell. Administrator Bridenstine testified that the Federal
    Aviation Administration (FAA) has already been involved in discussions
    about Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and Space Traffic Management
    (STM). Can you detail how the Department of Commerce has worked with
    the Department of Transportation and the FAA--both during your tenure
    and before?
        Secretary Ross. [The information was not available at the time of
    printing.]
        Mr. Mitchell. Space Policy Directive-3 makes the Department of
    Commerce the lead agency for Space Situational Awareness and Space
    Traffic Management, but it also calls on them to cooperate with other
    agencies. The Federal Aviation Administration at the Department of
    Transportation already has unique expertise in commercial airspace
    management. How does the Department of Commerce plan to work with them
    on this issue moving forward?
        Secretary Ross. [The information was not available at the time of
    printing.]
        Mr. Mitchell. General Hyten testified that when it comes to space,
    every element of the government is involved and that means there are
    going to be seams. He said that the seams are best addressed by
    establishing clear authorities and responsibilities. Can you provide
    more detail on how authorities and responsibilities are going to be
    handled among your partners identified in Space Policy Directive-3,
    especially the Department of Transportation?
        Secretary Ross. [The information was not available at the time of
    printing.]
        Mr. Mitchell. Both space and traditional commercial airspace
    traffic have some interplay, how are you resolving that issue? How are
    you working with FAA to address that specific seam?
        Secretary Ross. [The information was not available at the time of
    printing.]
        Mr. Mitchell. How does the Department of Commerce envision Space
    Situational Awareness and Space Traffic Management playing out in
    practice? Will this be handled by a government agency or is this an
    authority that could be given to another type of non-governmental
    entity?
        Secretary Ross. [The information was not available at the time of
    printing.]