Space Domain Awareness
Compliance for orbital operations and situational awareness
Space Domain Awareness provides the foundation for safe and secure space operations through tracking and characterizing objects in orbit. Thalorin supports SDA programs with compliance infrastructure addressing the unique security requirements of space surveillance networks and orbital data systems.
Space Policy Directive-3 handed civil space traffic coordination to the Department of Commerce on 18 June 2018 and promised the basic service free of direct user fees. Executive Order 14369 of 18 December 2025 struck that phrase out of four subsections of the directive and replaced it with language about commercial and other relevant use. No fee exists today, and the Traffic Coordination System for Space is running and taking owner-operator registrations. What moved is the premise underneath it: the National Space Transportation Policy issued on 20 August 2026 directs agencies to develop fair and transparent cost recovery policies for common services.
Authority is split and stays split. The Department of Defense holds the authoritative catalogue of space objects, maintained by the 18th Space Defense Squadron and released through space-track.org under agreements authorised by 10 U.S.C. 2274, while Commerce runs TraCSS for civil, commercial and national government users. The FCC's July 2026 satellite rules then point licensees at both at once — ephemeris to the 18th Space Defense Squadron and to a US space situational awareness system the Commission has identified as qualifying, a designation whose procedures the Space Bureau has not yet published.
The product is a classification problem, and that is the part that gets underestimated. An observation is unclassified when a telescope takes it. Fuse it with government tasking, correlate it against the authoritative catalogue, or deliver it under a national security contract, and the derived catalogue inherits the most restrictive handling of any contributing input. Teams build one pipeline for the commercial product, win government work, and discover the government variant cannot run on it.
What Thalorin tracks here is provenance, not posture. Every feed, aperture and derived product carries the caveats of everything upstream of it, so a fused catalogue acquires its controls by construction, and a new government tasking source raises the obligations it drags into the pipeline before the delivery is designed rather than during the delivery review. Redistribution limits travel with the data into whatever it becomes, which is the term most often lost between a sharing agreement and a customer-facing product.
Space operations face unique security challenges
Cost recovery is now permissible
Executive Order 14369 removed the free-of-direct-user-fees language from Space Policy Directive-3, and the August 2026 transportation policy asks agencies to build cost recovery policies. No fee exists yet; the constraint that prevented one is gone.
Two catalogues, one safety case
The Department of Defense catalogue and the Commerce screening service are separate systems with separate release terms and separate reliability. Reconciling a warning across both is an operational problem that the compliance boundary also has to describe.
Fused output inherits the strictest caveat
A pipeline built for a commercial product enforces no handling controls. One government input can pull the derived catalogue into Controlled Unclassified Information and into releasability restrictions the platform was never built to carry.
No sector regulator, only customers
National Security Memorandum 22 kept sixteen critical infrastructure sectors and space is not one of them, so no agency issues security requirements to space surveillance operators. Obligations arrive through contract clauses that vary per award.
How Thalorin helps
SDA system security compliance
Assess the sensor-to-catalogue chain against NIST SP 800-53 with an explicit authorisation boundary, so tasking, correlation and delivery are separately accountable rather than covered by one blanket claim.
Orbital data protection
Classify observations, ephemerides, covariances and tasking records by origin, carrying the marking through fusion so a derived product cannot be released on weaker terms than its inputs.
Sensor network authorization
Hold each site and aperture as an authorised component with its own accreditation state, so bringing a new telescope or radar online is an authorisation event rather than a capacity change.
Space surveillance integration
Carry space-track.org access terms and any 10 U.S.C. 2274 sharing agreement as live obligations bound to the feed they govern, including redistribution limits that follow the data downstream.
Conjunction assessment systems
Bind conjunction screening evidence to the run that produced it — catalogue epoch, screening volume, covariance source — so a warning can be reconstructed rather than merely archived.
Commercial SDA partnerships
Track Space Systems Command and Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve obligations against the award that imposed them, so a surge commitment and its security terms stay attached to the contract that bought it.
Space Domain Awareness: common questions
Is US government space situational awareness data still free to commercial operators?
Yes, as of August 2026. Space-track.org access and TraCSS services carry no direct user fee. What changed is the policy underneath them: Executive Order 14369, signed 18 December 2025, amended Space Policy Directive-3 to remove the requirement that basic space situational awareness and space traffic management services be provided free of direct user fees. That imposes no charge on anyone. It removes the constraint that prevented one, and the August 2026 transportation policy asks agencies to develop cost recovery policies for common services.
Should I be screening against space-track.org or TraCSS?
They are not alternatives. The Department of Defense retains the authoritative catalogue of space objects, maintained by the 18th Space Defense Squadron and released through space-track.org, while TraCSS is the Commerce service built to deliver conjunction screening to civil and commercial operators without routing them through a military system. Most operators hold both plus commercial sources, and the real work is reconciling warnings that disagree about the same encounter.
Does selling space domain awareness data to the government make my catalogue CUI?
Frequently, and the trigger is usually not the observation. Raw metric observations from your own sensors typically are not Controlled Unclassified Information. Correlation against a government catalogue, government tasking, or delivery under a contract carrying DFARS 252.204-7012 can make the derived product controlled, and it inherits the most restrictive handling among its inputs. The failure mode is a pipeline that publishes before anyone has asked which inputs contributed to the answer.
Is space designated as critical infrastructure in the United States?
No. National Security Memorandum 22, issued 30 April 2024, kept sixteen critical infrastructure sectors and did not add space, despite repeated proposals to do so. There is therefore no sector risk management agency issuing space-specific cybersecurity requirements and no sector-wide reporting regime. Requirements reach space surveillance operators through procurement instead, which makes them contract-specific and impossible to satisfy once for every customer at the same time.
How does a commercial SSA provider become one the FCC will accept ephemeris submissions to?
The process does not exist yet. The FCC's July 2026 order requires space station licensees to submit ephemeris to the 18th Space Defense Squadron and to one or more US space situational awareness systems the Commission has identified as satisfying the requirement, then directs the Space Bureau to develop the procedures for identifying those third-party providers, the required elements and form of submission, and the reporting cadence. The Commission separately seeks comment on certifying private ephemeris tracking systems.
Regulatory state described as of August 2026. Requirements change; verify against the current rule before relying on any date above.
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See how one evidence artifact satisfies Space Domain Awareness requirements alongside every other framework you carry.