AIRCRAFT AND SPACE VEHICLES SPACE SYSTEMS AND OPERATIONS

3rd May 2009
Space Operations and Ground Support Working Group (WG3)

Chairman’s Guidance and Preliminary Report

(These discussions are the Chairman’s best knowledge and understanding, not necessarily official ISO status or feedback.)

At the May 2009 Plenary and Working Group Meetings, I plan to emphasize new work and member duties and responsibilities.  Current work items are primarily the responsibility of designated authors, and only matters that require Working Group and higher authority approval need be exposed for consensus.   Technical experts who prepare the documents should be best qualified to adjudicate most technical matters.

This emphasis is further justified by the maturity of many of our work items.  Five that are very mature and that should advance rapidly to member body review and implementation as international standards are:  Space Debris Management and Mitigation, Disposal of Satellites from Geostationary Orbit, Reentry Management, Orbit Lifetime Estimation, and Residual Propellant Estimation.   Comments on these should only be substantive and should not revisit any technical matters or specifications.

Ballot for initiating work on important matters for Techno-medical requirements for human habitation in spacecraft ends shortly after this meeting; however, it appears that the work will be authorized.  It also seems that WG6, Materials and Processes, seems a more appropriate venue for this work, and it should be transferred from WG3 at the forthcoming Plenary.   The United States, including experts from NASA, has responded positively to this proposal.

Understanding of many technical matters continues to improve, and some requirements might be reconsidered.  Disposal of satellites other than through reentry should be discussed.  Recent research questions the sufficiency of Geostationary disposal guidelines and reveals that planned disposal of satellites from orbits above low Earth Orbit and beneath Geosynchronous Orbit may interfere with both the primary mission and missions of other satellites in that regime.  

I would also like to discuss the implications to our work of the Feb 2009 Iridium 33-Cosmos 2251 collision and remaining hazards from previous events.  In this regard, a standard or technical report on models of spacecraft fragmentation might be in order.

Several delegations feel that the Chinese delegation’s two year standing proposal for a standard on coordinate systems and reference frames is unnecessary, since the matter is well addressed in widely available texts and references as well as other work items.   

I will also review papers, presentations, and other research of WG3 members and our expanding liaison with SC13, otherwise known as CCSDS.   Our former work item 26885, Orbit Data Transfer, is now nearly at the CCSDS Blue Book (International Standard) stage.  It has been redesignated in the 29xxx series as an SC14 ISO standard.  The SC13/SC14 collaboration is the only entity that has prototyped and tested the new data formats in an operational environment.

Safety related items grow more important.  We are working with the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety to develop guidelines for orbit and constellation design with safety as a constraint.  Our next meeting will be at ESTEC, likely in Nov 2009, where this organization is well represented.

Relationships with the European Cooperation on Space Standards must be well considered by both SC14 and its working groups.   We have established coordination with Gilles Moury, a principal in ECSS interaction with other groups, and Nestor Peccia, who spans both ISO and ECSS.  I have attached the dinner speech I delivered at the ESA Space Debris Conference.  It exposes frankly issues of coordination and collaboration among space standards organizations.

Finally, our membership has changed considerably over the past two years that I find it necessary to assure that members understand the ISO standards development process, their responsibilities, and the nature of comments that are acceptable at different stages of development.  This is really the responsibility of national member bodies and the individuals who have been appointed, but it is one more task in our already busy schedules, and national delegation offerings are often expensive and too generic.    Therefore, we will devote Monday afternoon to this training.   It is mandatory at least for those who are authors or co-authors of WG3 work items.   I have attached to this distribution the excellent “My ISO Job” publication, which covers most of the most important material.

I look forward to your participation in Berlin.  These communications are late to need mainly because the official status of our work items was not delivered until yesterday.