[Ground-station] star tracker ?

[Howie DeFelice]

I think the difference is that a star tracker does not send or store a picture, it only analyzes the image data so does not fall into the category of "imaging" .

Howie AB2S
Another 1/3 of the $50sat team

________________________________
From: Ground-Station <ground-station-bounces at lists.openresearch.institute> on behalf of Ground-Station <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute>
Sent: Sunday, July 8, 2018 7:39:27 AM
To: Bruce Perens
Cc: ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute
Subject: Re: [Ground-station] star tracker ?

I am not a lawyer and I only quickly scanned the cited documents, so my comments should be taken with a grain of salt.

It looks to me that these documents talk about space sensing in such generic terms that they could be restricting almost anything, like even a simple temperature sensor or a solar panel illumination monitor. But reading the details indicates to me that the concern is with images of the earth. A star tracker collects images of stars (and probably other celestial objects such as planets and galaxies). So it seems to me to be unrelated to the technology being regulated. Granted, a telescope with a camera intended to point at stars could accidentally point at earth at some point, but if the software determines that there are no stars visible in the camera's field of view, it could prohibit the download of the data and that should be sufficient to avoid non-compliance with these regulations. Maybe that's too simplistic a view, but that's my view.

On Jul 8, 2018 01:14, "Ground-Station" <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute> wrote:
James,

NOAA requires a license for terrestrial imaging. Title 51 of the US code at https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/51<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.law.cornell.edu%2Fuscode%2Ftext%2F51&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb41c25d08f284861b53b08d5e4c7b42e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636666468722158158&sdata=xiadP9kTFTigwIRDy6PxzPT4TZng7ZxKlQoNzyVHChA%3D&reserved=0>
and Presidential Decision Directive NSC-23 at https://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/12747<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fclinton.presidentiallibraries.us%2Fitems%2Fshow%2F12747&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb41c25d08f284861b53b08d5e4c7b42e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636666468722158158&sdata=%2FbVctvxMZOTK8dDdLapEIv6J43zTBciXQIMHKeuZQFg%3D&reserved=0>
both include restrictions upon imaging.

They are concerned by things like high-resolution maps of Israel, which presumably would be used to bomb them.

I haven't read over the laws yet, but we'd have to understand them as part of any remote imaging mission. Whether or not a star finder could be restricted is dependent on both technical details and the law, yet to be studied.

    Thanks

    Bruce

On Sat, Jul 7, 2018 at 3:10 PM, Ground-Station <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute<mailto:ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute>> wrote:
I recently had a discussion with a couple of satellite builders (one of which was on the 50dollarsat project) and I asked what were the chances of building a 1 or 2u
cubesat that had a small telescope with camera on it.

One of the things that was brought up about that was that there is a fcc or DoD
rule that prohibited cameras pointing away from the earth. I was told that it was out
of concern that the U.S. didn't want anyone taking pictures of some super secret
satellite either by accident or on purpose.

I haven't had the time to look it up and hadn't even thought of this until I read this thread.

Is this true or not?

James W8ISS

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President, Open Research Institute; Board Member, Fashion Freedom Initiative.
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