Invited Paper: Status of the ISO Standards on Space Debris Mitigation

The past decade has seen the publication of a number of internationally-agreed guidelines and recommendations aimed at mitigating the growth in orbital space debris. In particular, the guidelines of the Inter-Agency Space Debris Co-ordination Committee (IADC) recommend a number of important debris mitigation measures. ISO - the International Organisation for Standardisation - is now transforming these guidelines into a set of measurable and verifiable requirements to minimise the creation of debris during the launch, operation, and disposal of space systems. The requirements are contained in a series of standards that also capture industry best practice and specify definite actions to be taken by satellite manufacturers and operators to achieve compliance. In this paper, the scope and status of each standard is discussed. Particular emphasis isgiven to the top-level standard, which contains all of the high-level debris mitigation requirements, and four high priority supporting standards that provide procedures and practices to enable compliance with the high-level requirements.