Commercial Integration: Responsible Space Operations Start with Open Communication

Published March 21, 2025
By Brett Anderson
U.S. Space Forces - Space Public Affairs

VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Maintaining a safe and sustainable space environment is critical to modern life, supporting everything from global communications and financial transactions to national security and logistics. The Department of Defense and the commercial space industry share a vested interest in ensuring space remains a safe domain that follows a rules-based international order.

Through the Commercial Integration Cell, U.S. Space Forces – Space maintains space domain awareness sharing agreements with over a dozen Commercial Mission Partners, enabling coordination at up to the TS/SCI level. This collaborative approach ensures the sharing of real-time information, enhancing safety in the space domain.

As part of the Commercial Integration Office, the CIC fosters ongoing collaboration between the DoD and CMPs, ensuring a shared understanding of the space environment. With an active presence on the Combined Space Operations Center’s operations floor, the CIC enables CMPs to exchange critical space domain awareness data, from routine satellite maneuvers to deorbiting plans. Maneuver data and deorbit plans are entered into space-track.org, a DoD database that shares updated information of objects in space. This two-way information-sharing helps reduce uncertainty, improves coordination, and reinforces responsible space operations.

SpaceX, a CMP within the CIC, provides an example of this collaboration through its proactive communication on targeted reentry operations for early-generation Starlink satellites. Rather than relying on uncontrolled orbital decay, SpaceX recently employed a controlled, propulsive deorbit approach, guiding satellites to safely reenter over unpopulated regions, such as open oceans.

The alternative to targeted reentry is passive deorbiting, where satellites rely solely on natural orbital decay. In these cases, deorbit timelines can stretch for months or even years, leaving inactive satellites drifting in orbit with limited or no maneuverability which increases collision risks, space congestion, and uncertainty.

"The ability to share satellite positioning and deorbiting information between the DoD and commercial space operators is fundamental to maintaining a safe space environment," said U.S. Space Force 2nd Lt. Simon Banks, CIC chief of plans. "By maintaining open lines of communication with CMPs, we reduce risk, enhance space sustainability, and ensure that all stakeholders are informed of satellite maneuvers via space-track.org."

SpaceX’s latest innovation in precision deorbiting techniques, including variable drag modulation, further strengthens this shared mission. By adjusting solar panel orientation to control atmospheric reentry, SpaceX increases its ability to guide satellites to safe reentry zones while actively communicating these maneuvers with the DoD, through the CIC, to ensure coordination with other space operators and relevant organizations.

The CIC’s collaborative framework enables CMPs to share insights, ensuring that SpaceX’s new deorbiting methods are communicated across the broader space industry. This allows CMPs like SpaceX to refine best practices, improve space traffic coordination, and strengthen overall space safety.

"The future of space operations depends on transparency, trust, and collaboration," said Banks. "By strengthening communication channels with our commercial partners, we are reinforcing the resilience of the space domain for all."

As commercial space operations continue to expand, the CIC’s role in fostering proactive dialogue and strategic coordination remains essential.

SpaceX and other CMPs’ ongoing collaboration with the CIC highlights how commercial innovation, combined with structured information-sharing, enhances the security and sustainability of the space domain. Through innovation, communication, and reinforced partnerships, the DoD and commercial industry are taking decisive steps toward a safer, more sustainable space future.