NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy has released a new report assessing the costs and benefits of mitigating, tracking and remediating the risks posed by small and large orbital debris.
The Phase 2 report provides estimates of the risks posed to satellites by space junk orbiting the Earth, from the largest debris down to millimeter-sized fragments, and outlines new approaches to mitigating the creation of new debris and tracking existing debris, NASA said Monday.
The report simulates the evolution of the orbital debris environment over a period of 30 years, modeling the costs that space operators would incur from experiencing mission-ending collisions with debris, dealing with close approaches and maneuvering to avoid debris.
“By measuring everything in dollars, we can directly compare shielding spacecraft to tracking smaller debris or removing 50 large pieces of debris to removing 50,000 smaller ones,” said NASA analyst Jericho Locke, the lead author of the report.
“This study is part of NASA’s work to rapidly improve our understanding of that environment as outlined in NASA’s recently released Space Sustainability Strategy, by applying an economic lens to this critical issue,” said Charity Weeden, NASA’s associate administrator leading the OTPS.
