A graphic image of satellites and debris in space, produced by the Center for Strategic and International Security, the Secure World Foundation, and the University of Texas at Austin. (Satellite Dashboard)
AUSTIN, Texas — The Trump administration has reinstated the top official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) charged with licensing commercial remote sensing satellite operations who was fired last week, following a reported revision in the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) instructions to federal agencies requiring the firing of all “probationary” employees.
Sarah Brothers, the head of NOAA’s Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs (CRSRA), is back on her job, a spokesperson for NOAA told Breaking Defense Tuesday.
Nonetheless, representatives of US remote sensing companies have expressed to Breaking Defense that they remain extremely nervous about possible roadblocks to future plans that require either new licenses or license modifications due to the personnel downsizing resulting from the efforts of Elon Musk’s DOGE team to chop the size of the federal bureaucracy.
CRSRA is the division within NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce responsible for regulating space-based commercial remote sensing, including work involving companies such as Planet, Maxar and BlackSky that provide imagery to the National Reconnaissance Office for use by the Defense Department for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance purposes. NOAA, in turn, is under the Department of Commerce. Several industry sources said that the Office of Space Commerce has lost between 25 to 30 percent of its total workforce of some 60 employees.
Tahara Dawkins, director of policy at Astroscale U.S. and former chief of staff of the National Space Council, emphasized the critical nature of CRSRA’s role, based on her own firsthand experience leading the office.
“Commercial remote sensing, including non-Earth imaging, plays a critical role in maintaining American space leadership. We look forward to CRSRA’s continued facilitation of private sector innovation in space,” she said.
Dawkins comments were echoed by several representatives of remote sensing companies, who noted that CRSRA has been instrumental in helping them navigate what is a bit of a murky regulatory arena as industry races to bring new capabilities to bear. They also pointed out that CRSRA’s “light touch” approach to regulation was crafted during the first Trump administration, and subsequently embraced by the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, there were many small sighs of relief from experts here at the annual Space Traffic Management conference at the University of Texas at Austin in response to the news, also confirmed by the NOAA spokesperson, that Dmitry Poisik, the head of the Office of Space Commerce’s program to create a civil space traffic management regime, too has been reinstated.
That program, called the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCCS), was designed under the 2018 Space Policy Directive-3 to take the burden of warning non-military satellite operators of potential on-orbit crashes off DoD’s shoulders.
Poisik was scheduled to speak at the conference, but withdrew after his termination due to the original Feb. 13 OPM memo ordering the mass firing of “probationary” employees. In most federal agencies, personnel who have yet to complete one full year in their job are given “probationary” status.
