Trump layoffs hit key 'air traffic control for space' unit

The Trump administration this week fired employees who were building a system to manage satellite traffic in space, weakening a badly needed effort championed by the U.S. space industry and the president's first administration, according to people familiar with the move. Roughly a third of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 25-person Office of Space Commerce, a little-known body relied heavily upon by the space industry, were given a few hours' notice of their termination on Thursday by acting NOAA chief Nancy Hann and were forced out of the office by the end of the day, two of the sources said. Their termination, the sources said, threatens to undermine efforts to complete what is essentially an air traffic coordination system for space, currently operating in a trial phase as growing global demand for crucial satellite services sharply increases the number of spacecraft in Earth's orbit. A NOAA spokesperson declined to comment on personnel matters. The layoffs were among hundreds of employees fired Thursday at NOAA, which also provides the U.S. government's weather forecasts and hurricane warnings. The chief of the Traffic Coordination System for Space, Dmitry Poisik, was among the employees fired, according to one of the sources. He could not be reached for comment. Cutting staff from the space traffic program, which currently alerts satellite operators of potential collisions with debris or other spacecraft, complicates a years-long effort to migrate those alerting duties out of the Pentagon and could cause confusion among early users of the system, two of the sources said. Donald Trump, as president in 2018, released a space policy directive calling on the Office of Space Commerce to create its own traffic management system, acknowledging an increasingly congested orbital environment.<br/>