The office is a badly needed civilian effort initiated by President Donald Trump's first administration but now imperilled by cuts.

The White House's 2026 budget proposal seeks $10 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAAOffice of Space Commerce, an 84% cut from the office's 2025 funding that would terminate Traffic Co-ordination System for Space (TraCSS), a civilian system to help prevent satellite collisions and alert operators of potential crashes.

Four-hundred and fifty companies from seven different industry groups, including Elon Musk's SpaceX and Amazon's Kuiper satellite unit, wrote in a joint letter on Tuesday to the Senate committee overseeing NOAA that without funding TraCSS, "US commercial and government satellite operators would face greater risks, putting critical missions in harm's way, raising the cost of doing business, and potentially driving US industry to relocate overseas."

The rise of vast satellite constellations like SpaceX's Starlink and heightened military and commercial activities in Earth's orbit have driven up risks of collisions between the roughly 12 000 active satellites in space and thousands more pieces of uncontrollable junk, prompting efforts to create what is essentially a civil air traffic control system for space.

Audrey Schaffer, Vice President of strategy and policy at space-tracking firm Slingshot Aerospace, said the cuts would forfeit an opportunity to shape global space traffic control as the US did decades ago for international air traffic control standards, while Europe and China develop their own satellite traffic systems.

"It's really important that there be coordination amongst these different systems, so we don't have this fragmented system," Schaffer said.

"If the US doesn't have a system that it brings to the table, I'm not really sure how the US exercises any leadership in the establishment of international space traffic management."

The Pentagon has long managed a space traffic database called Space-Track, but defence and industry officials argue that responsibility detracts from its national security mission and risks conflating an essential safety service with military interests as other countries seek improvements to global satellite co-ordination.

--Reuters--