NASA Advances on its Space Sustainability Strategy: Pam Melroy

The deputy administrator of NASA claims that the organization is making good strides toward putting the agency’s new space sustainability strategy into practice, three months after it was unveiled.

NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy gave a speech on July 12 at the Secure World Foundation’s Summit for Space Sustainability in this location. She discussed the agency’s advancements with the Space Sustainability Strategy, which was unveiled in April. Several research directions are part of this plan to better understand the increasing threats posed by debris in Earth orbit and how to reduce them.
Creating a “widely accepted framework” for evaluating space sustainability is one component of that plan. We have been surveying recent frameworks since April. We’ve been compiling and accumulating data on measurements and models, she added, including examining alternative frameworks for “extremely complex environments” in heliophysics and Earth science.

She stated that the work is still in progress, with a draft of the framework expected in November.
The agency has been working on other components of the strategy concurrently, according to Melroy, even though the strategy designated the framework as its primary objective. An examination of the uncertainty in collision risk assessments is part of that. NASA also released a report on an economic analysis of debris tracking repair and polled its employees on ways to make missions more sustainable.

When NASA unveiled its plan in April, Melroy made it clear that before spending money on any debris removal technologies, the organization intended to finish the framework and the analysis of uncertainties—a concept she referred to in her address as a “investment portfolio.” She said NASA conducted a review as part of a larger analysis of technology shortfalls, but that is still the case.
“I anticipate that a significant portion of our investments will go toward early-stage orbital debris management, improved space situation awareness and traffic management, and environmental education,” the spokesperson stated.