Space debris (ESA photo)

A Senate committee approved a bill Nov. 18 that gives the Commerce Department authority for civil space traffic management (STM), but it still faces significant obstacles to win passage in Congress this year.

This post is only available to members.

Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...