Standards Development

Scope

This document addresses the essential elements and protocols needed for Space Traffic Coordination (henceforth referred to as “STC”). STC is critical to enhance the safety, stability, and sustainability of operations in the space environment.” STC enables flight safety, mitigates collision risk (for manoeuvrable spacecraft), and mitigates Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) for all phases of flight, spanning pre-launch safety assessment through manoeuvre plans, on-orbit collision avoidance, RFI mitigation support services, and mission disposal.

This document is designed to enable the effective coordination of space traffic from pre-launch safety assessment to disposal at the end of operation through norms, the effective monitoring, and mitigation of collision risk and RFI. The document is designed for state actors, spacecraft designers, spacecraft operators, and STC system developers and operators.

While this document applies to the range of orbital regions in which current STC and SSA systems can effectively track, monitor, and provide actionable data for space objects, it is envisioned that this document is generally applicable to all orbit regimes and for orbits around all central bodies and barycentres.

1.1 Breakdown of space safety constituents across ISO standards

The space flight safety-relevant topics of Space Traffic Coordination, on-orbit collision avoidance, and launch collision avoidance are closely related. To minimize duplication and maximize document consistency, the various content that serve as the basis for these three disciplines has been divided up as shown in Figure 6.

Please see draft for Figure 6 — Division of space safety operations content spanning several ISO standards