![spacie shine spacie shine](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ed/b7/77/edb77724fb6e1c8c5d9d24114e035373.jpg)
Satellites have become the backbone of our modern economies, providing navigation services, telecommunications, weather forecasting, climate monitoring and television broadcasts among many other critical services. The Agency will also take a seat on the Space Sustainability Rating Advisory Board, as well as continuing to assist in many other ways. Once the rating system has entered operation, ESA will support EPFL in evaluating this potential impact for new space missions. It takes into account the additional burden the new mission poses to the operations of existing ones and its potential impact on the long-term evolution of the space debris environment. One particularly important component of the SSR is the new methodology for quantifying the space debris risk associated with a mission. the criteria on which space missions should be judged, and providing expert analysis, data and technical know-how developed over many years. The Agency's role in the development of the Space Sustainability Rating includes helping to define the 'rating architecture," i.e. "To achieve this, the SSR rating includes a peer-reviewed assessment of the short- and long-term risks that any mission presents to other operators and for our orbital environment in general."ĮSA's Space Debris Office, located at the Agency's ESOC mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany, has for years studied the debris environment, becoming a world-leading authority on this issue of global concern. "The SSR aims to influence behavior by all spaceflight actors, especially commercial entities, and help bring into common usage the sustainable practices that we desperately require," said Holger Krag, Head of ESA's Space Safety Program. There will be 'bonus marks' for adding optional elements, such as grappling fixtures, that could be used for the possible future active removal of debris. The SSR rating system will score the sustainability of spaceflight operators based on factors ranging from data sharing, choice of orbit, measures taken to avoid collisions and plans to de-orbit satellites at end of mission to how easily their satellites can be detected and identified from the ground. "Incentivising better behavior by enabling actors to compete on sustainability will create a 'race to the top' and eSpace at EPFL is a great organization to take the SSR to the next level." "The Forum is very glad to support such an innovative approach to the global challenge of space debris," says Nikolai Khlystov, Community Lead for Mobility and Space at the World Economic Forum. The SSR initiative has been developed over the past two years by the Forum, ESA and a joint team led by the Space Enabled Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, with collaboration from BryceTech and the University of Texas at Austin.įor the crucial next step, the Space Center (eSpace) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) has been selected to lead and operate the Space Sustainability Rating in preparation for its roll out. Much like the energy efficiency and nutrition labels now common on household items, food products and consumer goods, the Space Sustainability Rating will make clear what individual companies and organizations are doing to sustain and improve the health of the near-Earth environment. In a situation in which no single government or authority has the power to set and enforce strict rules of behavior for all space-faring organizations, this project promises to be a game changer. The global initiative, launched by the World Economic Forum, is the first of its kind. A new "Space Sustainability Rating' is currently in development that will shed light on the problem, scoring space operators on the sustainability of their missions, increasing the transparency of their contributions to protecting the space environment and encouraging and recognizing responsible behavior.