Abstract:
This work examines how effective space operations and long-term sustainability depend on a coordinated mix of international, inter-agency, national regulatory, and commercial leadership roles. It outlines a layered space governance framework encompassing United Nations treaties and guidelines, intergovernmental coordination bodies such as the IADC, international standards organizations including ISO and CCSDS, national regulatory authorities, and operator-driven commercial best practices. The analysis emphasizes that modern Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and Space Traffic Management (STM) require crowd-sourced data pooling, robust data fusion, and transparency across organizational boundaries to achieve decision-quality outcomes. Case examples illustrate how the rapid growth of large commercial constellations has increased conjunction rates, operational workload, and systemic risk, exposing limitations of legacy, siloed SSA approaches. The work highlights the critical role of international standards in enabling interoperable data exchange, comparative SSA, and coordinated collision avoidance. It further argues that operator-provided information, particularly planned maneuvers and spacecraft characteristics, is essential for maintaining orbit knowledge and mitigating risk. The study concludes that sustainable space operations require collaborative governance that integrates standards, regulation, and industry best practices rather than relying on any single authoritative system.
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Oltrogge, D.L., “International, Inter-Agency and space industrial leadership roles impacting space operations,” Improving Space Operations Workshop 2022, 16 May 2022.
