Standards Development

Scope

This Space Traffic Management (STM) – Rules of the Road standard specifies requirements to enable the supervision of space traffic, ensuring a better coordination and interoperability of space systems, and is resolutely oriented towards the limitation of collision risks and therefore limiting the risk of space debris creation due to accidental collisions. In the frame of STM Rules of the Road, the following topics are considered in this standard:

— Space Situational Awareness (SSA) activities, including Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST).

— Management of space orbits.

— Entire life cycle of space operations including launch, in-orbit operations and end-of-life de-orbit operations.

Conversely, the topic of Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) has been left out as RPO deals with intentional conjunctions whereas the main scope of Rules of the Road is to prevent the unintentional approach between active spacecraft (S/C) that would create a risk above a certain acceptable threshold.

The topics of Radio-Frequency Interference (RFI), interference with Astronomy (Dark & Quiet Skies), and coordination with relevant entities upon controlled re-entry, are also not considered in this standard.

This document is applicable to any Earth orbital regimes, except for orbits with perigee above the geostationary orbit.

Purpose

While the number of objects in orbit has shown a constant rate of increase over the first fifty years of space exploitation, a considerable increase of launches, and as a result of space objects injected in orbit, has occurred over the past few years, especially since the deployment of very large constellations in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Congestion of space is becoming a critical issue to consider and to urgently address, in a context of reduced cost of access to space and consequent diversification and multiplication of space actors and activities.

The emergence of this “New Space” environment calls for a better supervision and coordination of space activities. The European Commission, in its Joint Communication on a European Union (EU) Approach for Space Traffic Management (STM) from February 15th, 2022, is stressing this aspect and has identified that the EU should facilitate the development of STM standards and guidelines aiming at ensuring the safe and sustainable use of space. While a number of different binding and non-binding measures already exist, there is no comprehensive international approach to Space Traffic Management yet, and consequently no effective ways to manage space traffic nowadays.

STM will be critical in the future to enable flight safety, for instance by the mitigation of the collision risk for manoeuvrable spacecraft, the mitigation of radio-frequency interference, and more generally the coordination of space activities for all phases of flight, from launch up until mission disposal.

The development of Space Traffic Management aspects and associated Rules of the Road in space is of primary importance in order to maintain our activities in space, which are essential for the preservation of our planet Earth and the people thereon.