Orbital Debris and Space Situational Awareness Activities in NASA’s Heliophysics Division

Orbital Debris (OD) – Space Situational Awareness (SSA) activities were started in NASA’s Heliophysics Division (HPD) of the Science Mission Directorate early in 2021, with OD-SSA becoming an official part of HPD’s Space Weather Program in FY24. OD including anthropogenic debris, micrometeorites, and dust are now included in HPD’s definition of the Space Working Environment – defined as all parts of the space environment that affect human activities in space. This talk will present an overview of the OD-SSA activities in HPD, past and present, including a) addressing the measurement gap of <1 cm OD, b) Mission Design Lab activities on a dedicated small OD characterization mission, c) New OD science – signatures of objects moving through a space plasma, and d) NASA-NOAA MOU in support of Space Traffic Management (STM) / Neutral Density Modeling R&D.