Scientists at the University of Strathclyde are helping to shape international guidelines on the safe and sustainable use of space.

The University is part of a project, known as METRIX, also involving the University of Birmingham which is one of 10 projects sharing £380,000 of funding from the UK Space Agency.  

The project is supporting the UK’s contribution to the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) – the international forum that coordinates on technical research and shares data on orbital debris to develop guidelines for space sustainability, focusing on mitigation, protection, and understanding the debris environment to keep space safe for future missions.

Secure access

METRIX, led at Strathclyde by Professor Massimiliano Vasile – a member of the UK delegation to the IADC – is focused on identifying and evaluating metrics that can assess whether future space missions are environmentally sustainable.

Space debris – defunct satellites, spent rocket stages and fragments from collisions – pose a serious threat to active spacecraft and future missions, increasing the risk of collisions and compromising the long-term sustainability of the space environment.

Professor Vasile said: “It is vital that we ensure safe and secure access to space in the future. Project METRIX will provide a valuable insight into how sustainable current space activities are.

We will use a new approach based on complex networks and study the dynamic interplay between the environmental and socio-economic impacts of space activities.

There is currently no universally accepted way to measure the impact of new launches on the orbital environment.

METRIX researchers have analysed more than 40 different methods that scientists and agencies around the world have suggested for measuring the impact of space missions on the orbital environment. These include ways to assess how much debris a mission might create, how long objects will remain in orbit, or how they might interfere with other satellites.

Novel insights

However, many of these metrics focus only on short-term risks or look at debris in isolation. METRIX is taking a broader view. The team will recommend which of the existing approaches are most useful to decision-makers in government and industry.

The project will also propose two new metrics developed at Strathclyde, offering novel insights into the long-term evolution of space activity.

The research has wide-ranging implications for how future space missions are assessed and authorised – supporting the development of recommendations and mitigation approaches that can be adopted by both operators and regulators.