International Organization for Standardization

Space systems - Space debris mitigation design and operation guidelines for spacecraft - First Edition
 N TR 18146

Annotation

This Technical Report contains non-normative information on spacecraft design and operational practices for mitigating space debris.

This Technical Report is a supporting document to the family of international standards addressing space debris mitigation (see 2.2). The purpose of these standards is to minimize the creation of additional space debris by ensuring that spacecraft and launch vehicle orbital stages are designed, operated and disposed of in a manner that prevents them from generating debris throughout their orbital lifetime.

This Technical Report can be used to guide spacecraft engineers in the application of these space debris mitigation standards. Table 1 lists the main debris mitigation requirements defined in the standards and compares them to equivalent recommendations published by the United Nations and the Inter- Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee.

In Clause 3, the main space debris mitigation requirements are reported and discussed. Clause 4 provides guidance for life-cycle implementation of space debris mitigation related activities.

In Clause 5, the system level aspects stemming from the space debris mitigation requirements are highlighted, while in Clause 6, the impacts at subsystem and component levels are detailed.

Where it is not directly required by existing ISO standards but considered relevant to spacecraft operations, design and debris mitigation, content in this Technical Report is labelled as such with “[information]”.