Highlights of Recent Research Activities at the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office

The NASA Orbital Debris Program Office (ODPO) was established at the NASA Johnson Space Center in 1979. The ODPO has initiated and led major orbital debris research activities over the past 38 years, including developing the first NASA orbital debris mitigation requirements in 1995 and supporting the establishment of the U.S. Government Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices in 2001. This paper is an overview of the recent ODPO research activities, ranging from radar, optical, and in-situ measurements, to laboratory tests, and to engineering and long-term orbital debris environment modeling. These activities highlight the ODPO’s commitment to continuously improve the orbital debris environment definition to better protect future space missions from the low Earth orbit to the geosynchronous Earth orbit regions.