LEFT FOR DEAD: ANTI‐COMPETITIVE BEHAVIOR IN ORBITAL SPACE

A number of national and international organizations have adopted a policy of removing spacecraft at the end of life from the geosynchronous ring. However, a resolution of several technical issues still remains before an international policy can be developed and implemented by all users of geosynchronous orbits. The present study reviews the cataloged population of objects in the geosynchronous ring. The probability of collision is computed as a function of range and orbital inclination of an object. Long-term stability of supersynchron ous disposal orbits and of the geopotential stable points is examined. Several disposal options are considered. The results of the study show that the use of the supersynchronous orbits for disposal purposes is economical and effective in significantly reducing the collision hazard. The use of the geopotential stable points for disposal of spacecraft at the end of life, on the other hand, was found to be impractical. I. Introduction B ECAUSE of the uniqueness and usefulness of the geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO), the population of objects in this orbit has increased continuously. Reference 1 shows, for example, that at the beginning of 1988, there were 286 cataloged satellites residing in this orbit, not including spent upper stages. Of these, 110 to 130 operating satellites were on station along with 150 that are nonfunctional or abandoned. ,. Reference 2, on the other hand, shows that of the approximately 453 cataloged objects traversing GEO altitudes, only about 150 are geostationary. The others are either geosynchronous or in highly elliptical (Molniya) semisynchronous orbits. There are also a number of military spacecraft, the orbjts of which are not generally availably in published form. To reduce the collision hazard within GEO, approximately 30 to 35 satellites have been removed from GEO at the end of life. Several strategies are available for disposing of GEO satellites, suqh as moving them to stable longitudes or raising them to orbits above geostationary altitude. The benefits of removing old spacecraft from GEO are a) the freeing of desirable longitudinal positions for repl^cement spacecraft and b) the reduction of collision damage potential, which can become high for collocated satellites.3 The primary issues involved are a) the protection of GEO as a unique natural resource and b) operational considerations such as cost effectiveness of the maneuver, risks of explosion, structural breakup, or other malfurigtions in carrying out the maneuver and national and international policy considerations. Other issues include the potential impact on future traffic to GEO and the perturbative effects on disppsal orbits (e.g., solar radiation and the sun/moon gravitational perturbations). In other words, abandoned rocket stages or satellites should not be a hazard to future missions, and their orbits should not intersect GEO over long periods of time.

The higher harmonic terms of Earth’s gravitational potential slowly modify the nominal longitude of geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) satellites, while the third-body presence (Moon and Sun) mainly affects their latitude. For this reason, GEO satellites periodically need to perform station-keeping maneuvers, namely, east–west and north–south maneuvers to compensate for longitudinal and latitudinal variations, respectively. During the operational lifetime of GEO satellites, the thrusters’ response when commanded to perform these maneuvers slowly departs from the original nominal impulsive behavior. This paper addresses the practical problem of how to perform reliable east–west station-keeping maneuvers when thruster response is degraded. The need for contingency intervention from ground-based satellite operators is reduced by breaking apart the scheduled automatic station-keeping maneuvers into smaller maneuvers. Orbital alignment and attitude are tracked on-board during and in between sub-maneuvers, and any off nominal variations are corrected for with subsequent maneuvers. These corrections are particularly important near the end of the lifetime of GEO satellites, where thruster response is farthest from nominal performance.

In market economy, there are four types of markets: perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, monopoly. The main differences among them are the ability to set price, barrier to enter and exit the market, numbers of companies. To study innovation’s efficiency in these markets, it is necessary to understand their special characteristics. To simplify the problem, when patent is employed, only the innovation company has the access to this new technology. When it does not exist, every company in the market can use the new technology. In perfect competition market, there are no barrier to enter or exit and lots of companies producing identical products, so no company can set the price. Because there is no barrier, companies that can earn profit will enter the market, which decreases the price. Eventually, all companies’ marginal cost, average cost and marginal benefit is equal to the price, average benefit. In other words, companies in perfect competition market earn zero economic profit. Social welfare is always maximum in this type of markets. In this case, when one company discovers new production technology, other companies will follow immediately. Lower cost causes higher supply, which makes the price decrease and equal to the average cost eventually, leaving every company having zero economic profit, including the first company discovered the new technology, so there is no incentive for any company to spend resource on innovation. However, consumers’ welfare would increase because of lower price. When patent is employed, one company can produce products in a lower price and earn certain economic profit, but can hardly make an influence on the market because there are too many suppliers. Thus, in perfect competition market, patent is a good way to provide incentives for innovations. In monopolistic competition market, there are lots of companies selling slightly different products. The difference among products enables one company to increase the price over in a limited range, so monopolistic competition market is inefficient. In this type of markets, there are two types of innovations: technology and product. The former one reduces the cost and has the same consequence as that in perfect competition market. The latter one, product innovation, makes the product more special, giving the company more market power. However, without patent, product innovation will be copied easily, making the original product less special and canceling out the market power gained by the original company. Since there is no economic benefit, there is no incentive for any company in the market to innovate. When patent is employed, products’ difference is kept and gives the company more market power since there is consumer preference in monopolistic competition market. This increase of market power is not as negligible as that in perfect competition market, so the market becomes less efficient when the company with patent increases the price. In oligopoly market, there are only a few companies with great market power, so all of them can set the price. In this market, companies make decision based on both output and price effects. Output effect means when price is higher than marginal cost, companies can increase profit by increase its output. Price effect means when a company increases its output, the market price goes down, causing less profit for the company. When output effect is more impactful than price effect, companies will increase sales. When price effect is more impactful than output effect, companies will decrease sales. Oligopoly market can be inefficient without restrictions. Regarding innovations, there is still no incentives without the presence of patents. With patent, innovation company will gain market power that is huge enough to cause inefficiency and even to force other companies to exit the market. Thus, patent in oligopoly market will cause negative impact on society, which should be limited. The last type of markets if monopoly. In monopoly market, there is only one company, so patent is necessary. When this company innovates and decreases its production cost, it will tend to increase its output to maximize profit, which enlarges consumers’ welfare. However, this increase is not as much as that in perfect competition market, so innovation in monopoly market is still inefficient.

This study continues the series of papers devoted to the problems of autonomous operation of spacecraft in a geostationary orbit. The solution of the problem considered here assumes the formation of a set of algorithms for control processes in a closed autonomous spacecraft control and navigation system in a geostationary orbit. The paper is aimed at the formalization and solution of the new technical task of autonomous control during the spacecraft's ascent to the given orbital position and remaining in this position. An important requirement is to provide the safe separation of several spacecraft in one orbital position. The control problem is solved using the combined optimization method developed by us; in this method, the control vector is divided into the synthesized and the programmed components taking into account the principle of the separation of the navigation and control problem in the stochastic approach. The motion's models proposed in the previous paper are used to develop the control algorithms for a spacecraft's ascent to the working position in a geostationary orbit and remaining in this position. The results of the algorithms simulating the ascent and maintaining for the exactly known state vector taking into account the random spread of the initial conditions and thrust are presented.

It is important for satellite operations to forecast any increase in high-energy electron flux at a geostationary earth orbit (GEO) because high-energy electrons cause deep electric charging of spacecraft. We report on a forecast model of the high-energy electron flux using a neural network.

ABSTRACTA dynamic model for marginal cost pricing of port infrastructures links costs to system performance by combining a power-law function with time-dependent queueing analysis. Additionally, the model incorporates the marginal cost of capacity, including the effects of economies of scale. This allows the calculation of the marginal cost price under a dynamic framework. The model accounts for nonlinear behaviour of port demand, which is sensitive to price and service levels. The effects over time of cost and service levels on the port’s operational performance are quantified. The proposed model allows determining the optimal timing for capacity investment. The model is a starting point for the application of marginal cost pricing to ports. However, for practical application of such pricing method it is necessary to apply a system’s approach, as productivity and costs must be assessed at the terminal’s component level. This should allow the derivation of a marginal cost function at the terminal’s component level.

While the construct of market is one of the basic concepts in Economics, the term competition became the elemental paradigm in apprehending the organisation of markets. For economic assessment, it is crucial to understand how markets are organized, how they function, and how firms operating within them behave. Economists remain interested in how different market structures and the concentration of sellers affect market prices and quantities. Long before the advent of neoclassical economics and its equilibrium in a perfectly competitive economy, Adam Smith advocated for competitive markets as the preferred market structure because they lead to socially optimal economic outcomes. This concept essentially encapsulates the entire theoretical background of microeconomics. There are numerous arguments for clarification of the EU competitions rules as some of them are pointed at improving market efficiency for the benefit of consumers while others are driven by purely political and/or competitiveness scrutiny. Hence, the goal of this study is to test perfect competition conditions and therefore the competitive dynamics among European countries, as to analyse the disparity between the theoretical positions and empirical reality. Evaluation is based on testing the equality of prices and marginal cost in the long run, as well as in the short run within a panel structured sample of 38 European countries for the period of 1960-2022. Various estimation methods indicated the absence of the equality between prices and marginal costs across the panel sample and different sub-samples, but with the presence of long term cointegration between these variables, indicating that these variables share a common long run trend.

Impacts of subsidy regulation on the mobile market in Korea : Major provider’s diversification of handset quality

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<p>The NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) team at Ames Research Center has embarked on a collaborative effort involving scientists from NASA, NOAA, JAXA/JMA, KMA/KARI exploring the feasibility of producing EOS-quality research products from operational geostationary satellite systems for climate monitoring. The latest generation of geostationary satellites (Himawari 8/9, GOES-16/17, Fengyun-4, GeoKompsat-2A) carry sensors that closely mimic the spatial and spectral characteristics of widely used polar-orbiting, global monitoring sensors such as MODIS and VIIRS. More importantly, they provide observations as frequently as 5-15 minutes. Data from various currently operating geostationary platforms provide a geo-ring of hyper-temporal, multispectral observations. Such high frequency observations, particularly when combined with data from polar orbiters, offer exciting possibilities for improving the retrieval of geophysical variables by overcoming cloud cover, enable studies of diurnally varying phenomena over land, in the atmosphere and the oceans, and help in operational decision-making in agriculture, hydrology and disaster management. Beyond the weather-focused geo-sensors, a number of new spectrometers are scheduled to be launched in the next five years in geostationary orbit to study atmospheric pollution (GEMS, TEMPO), ocean color (GOCI) and carbon cycling (GeoCARB). This talk will highlight new research, data sets, algorithms and computational platforms that utilize data from geostationary satellites to advance our ability to monitor the environment and create climate resiliency.</p>

CNES operational practices for space debris risk limitation and protection

This article reconsiders the durable goods monopoly problem when the monopolist's marginal cost is private information. We show that the Coase Conjecture implies the No Trade Theorem: In any equilibrium in which the lowest-cost seller's initial offer approaches her marginal cost, the aggregate probability of trade must vanish. However, we also construct non-Coasean equilibria which approximate the unique outcome of the rental version of the same model. These (stationary) equilibria are comparatively efficient. The results are equally applicable to the mathematically-equivalent problem of sequential bargaining with two-sided incomplete information where one party makes all the offers. What are the consequences of monopoly in a market for a durable good? Present-day understanding of this question divides into two strands of thought. First, the monopolist may effectively lack any ability to credibly precommit on her future output. Under this scenario, the price will drop almost instantaneously to marginal cost, apparently yielding the efficient outcome normally associated with perfect competition.1 Second, the monopolist may possess an explicit (e.g. leasing the good rather than selling2) or implicit (e.g. the maintenance of reputation3) device enabling her to adhere to an output restriction. Under such circumstances, price will be maintained at a non-competitively high level, suggesting an outcome fraught with all the inefficiency of classical monopoly. The conclusions of the first paragraph rest on analysis of a standard model in which the monopolist's payoff function is taken to be common knowledge. A single firm with known constant marginal cost sells an infinitely-durable good to consumers with a known distribution of valuations for the good.4 The firm has the ability to revise its posted price

This paper is based on a study made by the author in 1972-1973. The cost information corresponds to 1970. Although wealth and population density vary somewhat between Latin American countries, the region can be considered, as a group, better off than the other underdeveloped regions of the world. The network studied is probably among the best in the region. The paper is addressed to the issue of service-related cost allocation in the actual telephone network of Costa Pica. Although it is theoretically impossible to determine univocally average costs for the different services (due to joint costs), computations are made on the basis of hopefully reasonable assumptions. Marginal costs can be computed univocally, and are computed for long distance links on a dynamic framework, and for urban networks on a comparative-statics framework. Pricing policies are a natural outcome of this study. However, the only price structure that can be computed using only the information included is efficient pricing. Efficient pricing under financial or other constraints requires an understanding of consumer behavior. Among the findings worth mentioning is the interdependence of the cost structure and technological changes. Examples of this are the lesser importance of holding time in common control exchanges vis-a-vis step-by-step, the lesser importance of distance in long-distance traffic in mircowave links vis-a-vis physical pairs. The notable disparity between cost and rates in modern longdistance links, resulting in cross-subsidization from long-distance to urban networks, is a very important issue in most telephone networks.

The Geostationary Korea Multi-Purpose Satellites 2A and 2B (GK2A and GK2B), developed by Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), were launched in 2018 and 2020, respectively. Following their successful launches and early operation phases (LEOP), the satellites settled into geostationary orbit and began daily monitoring of weather, atmospheric, and oceanic conditions surrounding the Korean Peninsula. This study proposes an enhanced S-band Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) data format and telemetry packet transmission strategy to ensure reliable and efficient satellite data management while supporting real-time anomaly detection. The proposed data format divides the CCSDS data region into two fixed-length telemetry packet transmission zones and an event log transmission area. For each data area, three packet operation strategies are suggested to improve satellite operation efficiency. Additionally, essential telemetry data for each satellite operation mode is categorized, and a method for managing the downlink transmission interval using packet group IDs is proposed to prioritize critical information during key mission phases. This approach includes a method for detecting anomalies within one second, enabling the immediate transmission of anomaly events for prompt response. The effectiveness of the proposed GK2 S-band satellite data format, anomaly detection, and operation strategies are validated using in-orbit telemetry and event data obtained during the LEOP operations of GK2A in 2018.

This paper examines a model in which demand is uncertain and production must occur before demand is known for sure. By investing resources in information gathering activity, demand can be forecast. The paper investigates the relationship between the incentive to plan and market structure and conduct. Competition leads to too little planning, while monopoly leads to too high a price relative to the social optimum. A dominant firm with a competitive fringe turns out to be better. than either pure competition or monopoly. One interesting result is that the optimal production strategy of the dominant firm is to produce even when price is below marginal cost. Although such a production policy resembles that associated with predatory pricing (a practice which is thought to be socially undesirable), society would be harmed by prohibition of such a policy.