Summary of the Workshop to Identify Gaps and Possible Directions for NASA's Meteoroid and Orbital Debris Programs (2011) / Chapter Skim
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Summary of Remarks Made by Workshop Participants
Summary of Remarks Made by Workshop Participants
Pages 1-14
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The MMOD programs interface with other NASA divisions, U.S. agencies, commercial entities, and international organizations, but there does not appear to be a consolidated research budget for the programs, and NASA does not have the capability to remove existing debris from orbit.
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A third obstacle cited by panelists as adding uncertainties in design is that experimental facilities for testing spacecraft damage, including via hypervelocity testing, generally employ spheres or simple shapes made from aluminum. Moreover, typical impact speeds at these test facilities do not exceed speeds of 7-8 km/s, whereas the average relative impact velocity of orbital debris particles in low Earth orbit (LEO)
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The task for the Meteoroid Environment Office is to identify the "background" meteoroid environment and the occasional meteoroid showers and their 2 The "25-year rule" is a guideline adopted by the international organization, the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) in its "IADC Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines" released in 2002 and revised in 2007.
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At the end of the session, attendees from non-NASA organizations praised the efforts and accomplishments of the NASA MMOD programs, particularly when taking into account the small budgets under which the various entities operate. SESSION 2: NASA MISSION OPERATORS Five NASA project and mission managers described specific missions from an operations standpoint, emphasizing the design tools they use to meet MMOD requirements and their experiences with actual MMOD encounters or anomalous effects that may be attributed to such encounters.
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When the Artemis spacecraft lost functionality of an instrument, the designers concluded that the support structure most likely broke due to fatigue, but the speaker highlighted the difficulty in arriving at a clear reason for the loss of data when first presented with a spacecraft anomaly. The Hubble Space Telescope presented an interesting case because its development in the 19701980 time frame meant that it was not designed to perform any collision avoidance and was constructed with no significant shielding against MMOD impact strikes.
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, NOAA, Department of State, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) involved in space policy, space and Earth science, and MMOD issues discussed challenges they face from the space environment, interagency issues and opportunities for collaboration, and how and to what extent they engage NASA's MMOD programs.
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Although the majority of the world's nations are signatories to treaties like the UN Outer Space Treaty and UN Liability Convention, there remain some that have yet to sign. This problem is compounded by countries, including treaty signatories like Brazil and India, that acknowledge the need for a sustainable space environment but do not want their space programs impeded by guidelines developed by the nations that created the problem of space debris in the first place -- namely Russia (and former Soviet Union)
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Although Iridium has not interfaced a great deal with NASA or NASA's ODPO, the representative from Lockheed Martin explained how that company incorporated NASA's work in MMOD into the design and construction of NASA's Orion crew vehicle capsule. Orion is the first human-rated reentry spacecraft designed to stringent MMOD-related design requirements for a variety of missions, including to LEO, the Moon, and Mars.
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The speaker also noted that MMOD damage is covered by typical space insurance packages. Third-party insurance claims for objects in space can be complicated by the vagaries of international space law.
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The 2010 National Space Policy places significant new emphasis on broad international cooperation with the goal of increasing stability and transparency in space. Preserving and ensuring a sustainable space environment is necessarily an international endeavor, and there will only be more national and non-governmental actors in space over the coming years and decades.
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• The committee heard that one of the NASA MMOD programs' goals, if not the overriding goal, is to protect the space environment. • The NASA MMOD programs have well characterized the threat posed by orbital debris and have influenced the space community and industry to take MMOD considerations into greater account in spacecraft designs and human spaceflight operations.
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• The large differences between rules among the different agencies to satisfy MMOD guidelines are surprising. • The fact that the 2010 National Space Policy focuses on the issues associated with orbital debris and is on target is impressive, despite the paucity of technical input in the policy formulation phase.
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Appendixes
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Key Terms
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