US remote sensing policies - Presidential Decision Directive 23 and the industry's start-up problems

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US remote sensing policies - Presidential Decision Directive 23 and the industry's start-up problems

The policy framework for the advent of US commercial observation satellites is rooted in the legislative authority of the 1992 Act, which was two years later translated by executive branch officials into policy guidance and later into regulations. The 1992 Act calls for the Department of Commerce, working in consultation with the Department of Defense, the Department of State, NASA, and other Federal agencies, to regulate commercial remote sensing and to issue licenses to companies that meet the provisions of the regulations. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) within the Department of Commerce develops the regulations and handles license requests.
The Clinton Administration inherited the Executive branch responsibility to translate congressional intent over licensing into practical guidelines for government agencies and American private firms from the George W.H. Bush Administration. The Lockheed Martin Corporation submitted the first formal request for a license allowing it to collect and market 1m imagery to NOAA on 10 July 1993. Seven months later on 10 March 1994, after considerable discussion within the interagency group that provides guidance for remote sensing issues, the Clinton Administration issued Presidential Decision Directive 23 (PDD 23), the first formal policy on licensing of commercial remote sensing. The policy allowed companies to sell data internationally to all but a very few nations, specifically those on the list of nations to which US law prohibits transactions. It also set out explicit rules for considering the sales of ‘‘turnkey’’ systems (i.e. complete operative satellites and ground stations) to other countries.
Despite the green light this policy gave to the commercial sector, the start-up experiences of the US commercial remote sensing industry have been less than satisfactory. Four of the seven imaging satellites of the US commercial firms have fallen victim to launch or inorbit failures. Even before the promulgation of PDD 23, EarthWatch Corporation, the predecessor to Digital-Globe, had gained a license from the George W.H. Bush Administration to launch and operate the EarlyBird 1 satellite (3m panchromatic; 15m color). Had it been successful after reaching orbit, this satellite would have been the first US commercial remote sensing satellite.
In April 1999 Space Imaging Inc. attempted to launch Ikonos 1 (0.82m pan, 4m color), which was lost during launch. Fortunately, the company was able to launch an identical satellite soon after, which reached orbit successfully on 24 September 1999. At the time of writing, it was still operating well and transmitting high resolution data to Earth for customers around the globe. After some startup tribulations, this satellite system broke new ground in the civil remote sensing community for sharpness and timeliness of delivery and began to open new possibilities for the use of satellite data in a wide variety of civil and security applications.
EarthWatch, reorganizing after the loss of EarlyBird 1, attempted to launch QuickBird 1, a satellite similar to that of Ikonos, into orbit in November 2000. This satellite failed to reach orbit. On 6 December 2000, the company received a Department of Commerce license to operate a satellite capable of acquiring data of 0.5m resolution. This license allowed the company to lower the orbital height of its sister satellite, Quickbird 2, sufficiently to allow it to acquire data of 0.61m panchromatic and 2.44m in 4 color bands.
On 21 September 2001, Orbimage Corporation attempted to launch its Orbview 4 satellite, which failed to reach orbit. Orbview 4 was significant because it would have been the first civil satellite to carry a hyperspectral sensor, capable of sensing 200 individual spectral bands of moderate spatial resolution. In addition, it also carried a sensor capable of achieving resolutions of 1m panchromatic and 4m in four color bands. The 8m resolution hyperspectral sensor had been funded by the US Air Force as an experimental sensor to test the utility of such data for US military uses. For civilian distribution, the spatial resolution of the data was limited to 24 m. This effort was particularly noteworthy because it indicated a growing willingness of some in the US defense community to enter into explicit partnerships with the commercial data suppliers.
Finally, on 26 June 2003, while in bankruptcy, Orbimage successfully launched Orbview 3, a competitor to Ikonos and Quickbird. With this success and three working satellites in orbit, the US commercial remote sensing industry reached a significant milestone, delivering sharply defined views of Earth’s surface to thousands of customers around the world.
Despite initial objections from officials in a few other countries that the open availability of data of such clarity would undermine security, and official restrictions in some countries on the internal distribution of imagery of those countries, the data are marketed widely. To soften the concern about data availability that some countries might have, PDD23 also included a provision that the data would conform to the UN Principles on Remote Sensing. PDD 23 helped US companies lead the way to a revolution in geospatial information and sharply enhanced global transparency, which is reflected in unprecedented domestic public and global access to high resolution satellite imagery data and information products. Nevertheless, as industry and government officials gained experience with the provisions of the policy, certain concerns soon appeared.
First, the policy set a restrictive tone towards commercial capabilities. Developed prior to any actual experience with commercial systems, PDD-23 emphasized placing limits on satellite technical characteristics, such as spatial and spectral resolution, or on data availability during times of conflict. From the industry standpoint, the latter feature, known as shutter control, was the most onerous because it was irritatingly vague:

"During periods when national security or international obligations and/or foreign policies may be compromised, as defined by the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State, respectively, the Secretary of Commerce may, after consultation with the appropriate agency(ies), require the licensee to limit data collection and/or distribution by the system to the extent necessitated by the given situation."

From the industry standpoint, that vagueness introduced a significantly higher level of market risk for the company. Although the companies understood the potential need to limit collection or distribution of data for national security purposes, they were concerned that including the phrase, ‘‘and/or foreign policies,’’ would allow restrictions that were less well understood by their customers, partners and potential investors.
Government use of the data was neither encouraged or discouraged by PDD-23, a reflection perhaps of the intelligence community’s skepticism about the utility of the data for routine intelligence gathering. In fact, the defense and intelligence communities were initially quite reluctant to use commercial data. At first they doubted whether the data were ‘‘good enough’’ for meeting their requirements or would be reliably delivered in a timely manner. The new commercial systems were in some sense seen as competitive with intelligence community attempts to introduce new systems. There was also a reluctance to use much commercially available data for fear that Congress and some Administration officials would press the community to use the commercial data instead of investing heavily in new ‘‘national technical means’’ (NTM). Also, the commercial systems had to prove themselves technically to the entrenched bureaucracy in the intelligence community.
As it has turned out, the commercially supplied data have proved very effective for a wide variety of public policy purposes, from disaster response to providing detailed, up to date maps of Afghanistan. During the brief war in Afghanistan, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), the official conduit for purchases of defense and intelligence community data, bought complete coverage of the country from Space Imaging to assist in the allied offensive against the Taliban. Among other things, data products from the commercial systems can be shared among allies. The systems have also proved useful in relieving the NTM of routine reconnaissance tasks.
In sum, although the PDD-23 policy was intended to encourage the development of a robust US commercial remote sensing satellite sector, its intended effect was substantially hamstrung by various constraints and ambiguities that contributed to delays, inhibitions, and inconsistencies in the policy implementation process that involved government agencies with very disparate equities and did not sufficiently support the industry’s development of new commercial systems. Hence, as the progress of the initial US commercial remote sensing satellite firms fell quite short of the initial expectations, there was a growing pressure for clearer top-level guidance to improve the long-term prospects that the commercial firms would meet the US government’s interests in having a strong commercial remote sensing sector. [1]

References

[1] R.A.Williamson, J.C.Baker
"Current US remote sensing policies: opportunities and challenges".