The National Research Council, under the auspices of the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, will establish an ad hoc committee to assess NASA’s orbital debris programs and provide recommendations on potential opportunities for enhancing their benefit to the nation’s space program. The committee will:
1. Review NASA’s existing efforts, policies, and organization with regard to orbital debris and micrometeoroids, including efforts in the following areas:
• Modeling and simulation;
• Detection and monitoring;
• Protection;
• Mitigation;
• Reentry;
• Collision assessment risk analysis and launch collision avoidance;
• Interagency cooperation;
• International cooperation;
• Cooperation with the commercial space industry.
2. Assess whether NASA should initiate work in any new orbital debris or micrometeoroid areas.
3. Recommend whether NASA should increase or decrease effort in, or change the focus of, any of its current orbital debris or micrometeoroid efforts to improve the programs’ abilities to serve NASA and other national and international activities.
The committee should assume that the programs will be operating in a constrained budget environment.
The study will result in two reports. The first will be a workshop report and the second will be the committee’s final report at the conclusion of the study.
This project is sponsored by NASA.
