the reason they do that because that dealsr with their compliance with the outerspace treaty. you have company volunteering to come under the regulatory regime of the department of commerce. and that be fall you about the degree the industry feels that we work in unison together. >> thank you administrator, mr. bridenstine nasa has a strong relationship with the department of defense and should the department of commerce take over space traffic management is your relationship going to change one way or the other? what is nasa's whole dealing with the department of commerce? it has a wonderful question. nasa has people at j smc young for the interests of nasa with their data in tools that is happening right now if there is an a asset that cod be at risk because of an object track, the analyst take that data and get in touch and go straight to johnson or they report it to the trajectory operations officer that johnson space into and then they do further analysis to determine if that object could ultimately put the international space station at risk that is what they are specifi

there are kinetic outerspace threats like direct descent missile. it strikes a satellite in orbit, rashes it to pieces. there are co-orbital asat threats, where you launch a satellite into orbit and yourver it to collide with target satellite. it creates a lot of pieces of debris. both russia and china have the capability to do that. they have demonstrated that. arend that, there non-kinetic forms of physical attack on satellites. you can use things like high-powered lasers from the ground or from another satellite, to hit a satellite and cause it to overheat. it causes physical destruction. you can use a high-powered microwave weapon that can cause circuits to overload on a satellite. if it is high enough power, you can fry the circuits and permanently destroy the satellite. other countries have demonstrated the ability to blind imaging satellites. you can use a laser from the airplane, andhe you can totally blind a sensor. no one else will see it. the satellite will become an operation. we recently did a report you can find on the csi website, spa

the reason they do that is it deals with their compliance with the outerspace treaty. here you have companies volunteering to come under the regulatory regime of the department of commerce and i think that speaks volumes about the degree to which we can work in unison. >> thank you, secretary. administered her attorney, nasa had a long and strong relationship department of defense and you mentioned and should be the department of commerce take over the space traffic management and is a relationship with dod going to change one way or the other and also what would nasa's role in dealing with the department of commerce on some of the issues you have been dealing with the deferment of defense. >> that is a wonderful question but even right now nasa has folks at the j spock that are looking out for the interest of nasa with all the great data and tools that are available inside the j spock. that is happening right now and if there is a nasa asset that could be at risk because of an object to being tracked at the j spock the orbital safety analyst ultimately take the data a

some of that is prohibited i the outerspace treaty that we are a signatory to. so are many other countries around the world. you cannot claim territory. there are no borders and space. it does not even make sense to try to claim territory in space, because satellites are always moving over other countries. that is the utility of them, in many cases -- that they can fly over other countries without permission. so it is probably not the best choice of words. but really, it is about protecting our space assets, so that we can protect u.s. interests here on earth. a lot of people forget that the gps that your phone uses, that little chip in your phone -- that is relying on military satellites. gps is a military satellite constellation. in other countries are developing ways to defeat that, to cause gps to go down and to not work. we need to be better protected against that. union forrding to the concerned scientists, last year about 800 u.s. based satellites currently orbiting the earth. 470 six commercial. 159 military. 150 government. 18 civil. .ou talked about gp

the reason they do that is it deals with their compliance with the outerspace treaty. here you have companies volunteering to come under the regulatory regime of the department of commerce. i think that speaks volumes about the degree to which we work together. >> thank you secretary. adminstrator bridenstine, nasa has had a very strong relationship with the department of defense as you mentioned. should the department of commerce take over the space traffic management, is your relationship with the od -- with dod going to change and what would be nasa's role in dealing with the department of commerce on some of the issues you have been dealing with, with the department of defense. to that's a wonderful question. even right now, nasa has folks with all the great data and tools that are available inside the jake fox. if there's an asset asset that could be at risk because of an object that's being tracked, the orbital space analyst take this straight to johnson where they reported to the trajectory operations officer. we call that the topo, at johnson space center. then

there are kinetic outerspace threats like direct descent missile.trikes a satellite in orbit, rashes it to pieces. there are co-orbital asat threats, where you launch a satellite into orbit and yourver it to collide with target satellite. it creates a lot of pieces of debris. both russia and china have the capability to do that. they have demonstrated that. arend that, there non-kinetic forms of physical attack on satellites. you can use things like high-powered lasers from the ground or from another satellite, to hit a satellite and cause it to overheat. it causes physical destruction. you can use a high-powered microwave weapon that can cause circuits to overload on a satellite. if it is high enough power, you can fry the circuits and permanently destroy the satellite. other countries have demonstrated the ability to blind imaging satellites. you can use a laser from the airplane, andhe you can totally blind a sensor. no one else will see it. the satellite will become an operation. we recently did a report you can find on the csi website, space th