Speaker
Description
Formalized and internationally supported space debris mitigation guidelines have been in place for several decades. Since 2010, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published a comprehensive set of space system engineering standards aimed at mitigating space debris. These standards and guidelines reflect the common requirements and practices around the globe and are nowadays made applicable to most newly developed missions worldwide. Given the dynamics in active research on the topic, verification of these requirements has often been as complex the get right as defining them in the first place.
In order to verify these requirements, ESA maintains and develops since 2001 the comprehensive tool DRAMA (Debris Risk Assessment and Mitigation Analysis) for the compliance analysis of a space mission with space debris mitigation standards. Similar tools are in place at other agencies or for national authorities. Verification of requirements is essentially done via a predefined procedure which aims to include the consolidated research findings at a given time.
With the increased emphasis on space debris mitigation and sustainable use of outer space in general during the last decade, new findings and paradigms have emerged which need to be accounted for when verifying requirements. This talk will focus on the response via the tools and databases DRAMA3, MASTER8, and ESTIMATE. Their aim is to ensure a coherent European and Intercontinental baseline for the verification of requirements, by taking into account consolidated knowledge early on in projects as well leaving room for the multitude of specialised developments which take place as we speak.
