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posted by chromas on Friday April 06 2018, @06:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the unlicensed-pixels-prove-the-earth-is-flat dept.

During a recent SpaceX launch for Iridium, the live coverage of the mission was cut off early, with the host pointing to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) restrictions on launches that don't obtain a license. While SpaceX may have been breaking the law on previous missions that it had broadcasted without obtaining a license, it appears that nobody at NOAA realized until the high-profile maiden launch of Falcon Heavy. However, there is also a dispute over whether NOAA approached SpaceX about the issue or SpaceX voluntarily asked for a license:

NOAA had recently told the company to get a license for the cameras on the rocket, SpaceX said after the launch. The reason? The cameras take video of the Earth from orbit, and NOAA regulates imagery of Earth taken from space, thanks to a 26-year-old law. However, this was the first time SpaceX needed to get a license for its cameras. SpaceX filed a license application just four days before the launch, but NOAA couldn't approve the use of the cameras in time. (Reviews can take up to 120 days, NOAA says.) And so there was a blackout when the Falcon 9 reached orbit.

What changed? SpaceX and other rocket companies have been livestreaming their launches from orbit for years now, and practically all show Earth in the background. Well, it's possible that SpaceX may be in NOAA's crosshairs because of the company's recent Falcon Heavy launch and famous Starman livestream. In February, SpaceX aired live footage of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's Tesla in space for hours, with Earth prominently featured in the background. It got massive amounts of attention — and that may have triggered NOAA to reach out to SpaceX, requiring the company to get a license for its cameras, according to a report from SpacePolicyOnline.com.

[...] There's still some confusion around the livestream saga, though. NOAA claims that SpaceX was the one to reach out to the agency about getting a license, not the other way around. "It was SpaceX that came to us," Tahara Dawkins, the director of NOAA's Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs Office said at a meeting Tuesday, according to Space News. "It wasn't NOAA that went out to them and said, 'Hey, stop, you're going to need a license.'" SpaceX disagrees. A company spokesperson, speaking on background, says it only filed an application after NOAA said the cameras qualified as a "remote sensing space system" and needed a license. (We asked NOAA for further clarification and will update the story if we hear back.)

Plus, neither NOAA nor SpaceX will admit that the Falcon Heavy launch was what started this chain of events, but Weeden argues it's the likeliest catalyst. "Starman probably attracted so much attention that someone at NOAA or someone at SpaceX realized they may have crossed that threshold to start thinking about that license," he says. When asked during Tuesday's meeting if SpaceX had broken the law with its past broadcasts from space, NOAA's Dawkins said "she would not know without looking specifically at what took place," according to SpacePolicyOnline.com.

SpaceX says it doesn't need to obtain a license for NASA missions, such as the recent CRS-14 mission to the International Space Station. SpaceNews notes that the American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act would allow the Secretary of Commerce to waive licensing of some remote sensing systems.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Friday April 06 2018, @07:56PM (5 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Friday April 06 2018, @07:56PM (#663532) Journal

    SpaceX is obviously not selling those pictures.

    The license isn't about economic benefit.

    The law that the requirement derives from was concerned about spying, or revealing sensitive sites at a resolution sufficient to give an enemy a tactical advantage.
    Like most laws, it was written in such an absolutist way that it could be extended to cover anything in space.

    Of course the government already realizes this is stupid, and the Russians aren't going to apply for a license, nor tell anyone what resolution they can achieve.
    So the government mandates keeping super secret things indoors or covered up. They didn't even bother to protest when Google captured pictures of a Sub's super secret propellers in drydock at Bangor sub base, because that horse was already out of the barn.

    This is what makes this so laughable. The cams SpaceX uses never reveal enough detail to be of value for spying.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 06 2018, @08:11PM (2 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday April 06 2018, @08:11PM (#663537)

    The cams SpaceX uses never reveal enough detail to be of value for spying.

    99% of what people think of as "satellite imagery" is actually taken by low flying planes. The military is pretty good at keeping those out of the sensitive areas, but if you put a good super-telephoto lens on a good 16MP imager and pointed it at the wrong place from LEO (on a day without clouds...), you might get something akin to looking out the window of a Cessna at 1000' with an ordinary cell-phone camera.

    This particular flap - yeah, it's very believable that it's a matter of somebody somewhere deciding that they didn't like pictures of some guy's old convertible with an Astronaut mannequin in it, and that somebody happened to know something about an old law...

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    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 07 2018, @02:45AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 07 2018, @02:45AM (#663623)

      SpaceX makes United Launch Alliance look really boring and most uncool. You can see the motive here. United Launch Alliance thus reminds NOAA, perhaps indirectly via a member of congress, that there is a law that is supposed to be enforced.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday April 07 2018, @06:50AM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday April 07 2018, @06:50AM (#663692) Journal

        Maybe. That still leaves the funny dispute over the basic fact of who approached who.

        The archaic law here is almost certainly going to be changed in SpaceX's favor. NOAA employees probably didn't appreciate whatever flak they got over this from SpaceX fanbois, and are eager to see the issue go away forever. If this was petty harassment on ULA's part, it's not very effective. They need to do things to kill/jail/disgrace (#MeToo sex scandal) Elon Musk, or set the company's plans back by years, possibly via sabotage [spacenews.com]. Because when BFR launches, ULA is going to look like a bunch of obsolete chumps, and even Congressional pork or their Vulcan rocket won't be able to save them from $100-300/kg launch costs.

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  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday April 07 2018, @12:58AM (1 child)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Saturday April 07 2018, @12:58AM (#663604) Homepage Journal

    I learned this from an Air Force cyber command recruitment video

    Cell phones have a maintenance mode that turns on the microphone without the users knowledge

    I'm not just paranoid: this was demonstrated at black hat

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    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday April 07 2018, @03:34AM

      by frojack (1554) on Saturday April 07 2018, @03:34AM (#663647) Journal

      Smart phones are also forbidden on some military bases, because they all have cameras.
      If you can find a smart phone without a camera, most bases have no problem with cell phones or smart phones.

      I know a lot of people who work in a couple secret naval bases that gravitate to a couple models of candybar style phones with no camera. They leave their smart phone at home.

      And at black hat, they demonstrated turning on the mic in a phone they had physical access to. Its sort of a different thing.

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