FCC Fines DISH IDR 2.3 Billion For Violating Waste Disposal Rules In Orbit

Illustration of waste disposal in space carried out by the DISH Network (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA - The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has fined the DISH Network, a satellite television provider company. The FCC has only given a fine for waste problems for the first time.

Reporting fromSpace, DISH dumped the EchoStar-7 satellite by leaving it on a geostationary orbit. This satellite should have come out of orbit in 2022, but the fuel ran out and the company couldn't do anything.

Thanks to DISH's mistake in not being able to dispose of aircraft debris to the designated disposal site, the company was fined USD 150,000 (IDR 2.3 billion).

The violation committed by DISH was published by the FCC on October 2. According to their statement, this fine needs to be given as a legal step in maintaining space. What's more, the earth is facing the problem of piles of garbage in its orbit.

"Along with the increasing number of satellite operations and the acceleration of the space economy, we must be sure that operators comply with their commitments," wrote Head of the FCC Enforcement Bureau Loyaan A. Egal in his official statement.

The FCC wants to make it clear that they have the right authority to act. They also want to emphasize that the problem of dismantling garbage in space is so important that companies can think long about the problem of disposal.

For information, the European Space Agency (ESA) estimates that the amount of waste in space has reached 330 million copies. This number is also a concern so that many parties move to overcome the problem of waste.

In fact, the United States Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) proposed a number of rules before the aircraft was launched by top-level private companies. This rule is proposed so that debris in space does not increase.