On December 16, Dr. Francesca Letizia from the ESA Space Debris Office gave a seminar at PoliMi about the sustainability of the space environment and the importance of space situational awareness for current space activities and for future space exploitation.
Her presentation highlighted various topics related to the space debris environment. First, Dr. Letizia discussed the current state of the debris environment in space, and the issues that it poses. In particular, she focused on the current efforts, or lack of, from the space sector in terms of compliance to space debris mitigation guidelines provided by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC). Â The diagram below shows the compliance of objects with the regulation of orbit clearance over the years; although the increasing trend is encouraging, it is still not enough to ensure the sustainable exploitation of the space environment in the future.
Then, she discussed the current solutions in and required activities for collision avoidance and management of conjunctions with a debris object.
A huge thanks to Dr. Francesca Letizia for the engaging talk given to PoliMi-DAER staff and students of the Master in Space Engineering, and for an inspiring Q&A session providing a taste of the activities in the Space Debris framework at ESA and insightful advices for the students’ careers.