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China’s Commercial SSA Company and “TLE Localization”

  • Published
  • China Aerospace Studies Institute

A Chinese commercial space company recently began providing services that merge the functions of the U.S. Space Force’s (USSF’s) Unified Data Library (UDL) and the United States Department of Commerce’s Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS). China is increasingly self-reliant in the space data sector, and this new commercial service aims to “localize the two-line element (TLE)” by 2028. If successful, China’s space traffic management system would be independent from the United States system. China’s space object catalog already includes different data compared with the USSF’s catalog, beyond the inclusion of the U.S.’s classified satellites. Because China does not have access to a global ground network of radars, it has developed a different way to track satellites and scan for debris in low Earth orbit (LEO). For example, its catalog includes much more space-based sensor data and ground optical sensors tuned for LEO.