International Cooperation to Ensure Space Sustainability

Orbital debris mitigation and removal represent key aspects of space sus­tainability. They are highlighted first because they are the most urgent issues facing space-faring nations.

  • Other elements that need to be ad­dressed include space situational awareness and a complete picture of the natural environment (gravity mapping and space weather, for example).
  • Just like air traffic management, which requires situational awareness, weather, terrain characterization and other inputs, any future space traffic management system will have similar requirements.
  • At the very least, future space traffic management will require a robust situational awareness system that captures not just the locations and trajectories of spacecraft, but also of orbital debris.

Space Code of Conduct

  • All of these elements constitute an architec­ture that would require efficient and effec­tive systems of governance in order to ensure safe, secure and peaceful space operations.
  • A space code of conduct, some proposals of which have already been introduced, would provide a foundational set of principles or a "best practices" guide. A proposed code of conduct presented by the European Union in 2009 includes basic do's and don'ts for space, and addresses the mitigation of orbital debris, among other things.

International Civil Space Situational Awareness

  • Orbital debris and orbital crowding mean that owners and operators of satellites and spacecraft need information on the objects orbiting nearby in order to avoid collisions like that experienced between Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251.
  • Several States and satellite owner-operators monitor the lo­cation of objects in space, but only in limited ways-the "big picture" is not fully known by all.
  • The most robust understanding of the near Earth space environment is obtained by the United States military's Space Surveillance Network, which tracks about 21,000 man-made objects in Earth orbit (as of 2010).
  • Because of national security sensitivities, the United States has been reti­cent in the matter of allowing owner-operators around the world to tap the information. In order to enable many safety and sustainability initiatives to be effective, a certain amount of orbital data will need to be available to all users of Earth orbit.
  • Work has been underway to establish a system where participating satel­lite owner-operators (government and commercial) can share information on position and electromagnetic interference for safety purposes. Com­munications satellite companies like Intelsat, SES Global and Inmarsat, for example, have formed a Space Data As­sociation (SDA) for GEO satellites.
  • In the future, the SDA could expand to include other satellite operators and cover other regions of Earth orbit, such as SSO.