NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said the agency has made strides in implementing key aspects of its Space Sustainability Strategy, including the development of a “widely accepted framework” for the assessment of space sustainability, SpaceNews reported Sunday.
In April, NASA issued the strategy’s first volume, which is focused on Earth orbit.
“Since April, we’ve been surveying recent frameworks. We’ve been gathering and collecting information on metrics and models,” Melroy, a previous Wash100 awardee, said during her speech at a summit Friday in Tokyo.
According to the deputy administrator, NASA expects to release a draft of the framework in November.
Melroy said the agency has been working on interagency and international coordination efforts to meet the strategy’s other goals and named Trudy Kortes, an official within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, as interim director of space sustainability.
“She’s just going to help take those initial steps while we’re going through a very broad search,” Melroy said of Kortes.
