Space Station

Delays in Dealing With Space Debris May Reduce Safety and Increase Costs Gao ID: IMTEC-92-50 June 2, 1992

Having greatly underestimated the amount of dangerous space debris that the planned Space Station Freedom will encounter during its 30-year lifetime, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) faces critical decisions involving tradeoffs between significant cost increases and schedule delays, and acceptable risks to station safety. Space debris--orbiting remnants of past space missions--has emerged as a serious problem, imperiling a recent space shuttle flight and threatening the space station with potentially catastrophic collisions. Yet most of NASA's current designs for protecting the space station and its crew from debris fall short. NASA has made little progress in developing the additional shielding the space station will need to protect against larger debris, and the station is not being designed to warn the crew about imminent collisions with medium-size debris. Launching the space station without an overall space debris strategy could have serious consequences for both crew safety and overall mission costs.

GAO found that: (1) most current NASA designs to protect the space station and crew from debris are outdated, since they rely on a 1984 model of the space environment, which underestimates the increasing amount of debris the space station will encounter; (2) although NASA has instructed its space centers to incorporate a 1991 model into their designs, the centers have not yet implemented the change, as it will negatively affect design, cost, and scheduling; (3) the overall NASA protection strategy for space debris is insufficient; (4) before NASA completes critical design reviews in early 1993, it must make decisions regarding tradeoffs between costs to protect the station, possible scheduling delays, and acceptable risks to station safety; and (5) NASA has been working with other space-faring nations to avoid further debris creation, and has made progress in estimating the current and future severity of the debris problem.

Recommendations

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