Journal of Space Safety Engineering最新文献

{"title":"International cooperation on space safety standards (ICSSS)","authors":"Tommaso Sgobba","doi":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.08.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.08.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper illustrates a proposal by the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS) to establish an independent forum, called International Cooperation on Space Safety Standards (ICSSS), for space faring countries regulators to harmonize national regulations, and to collectively vet existing space safety voluntary consensus standards in view of recommending their adoption in national regulations.</div><div>By signing the ICSSS Charter, the forum members would commit to “best-efforts” in aligning their national regulations to the reference space safety standards the forum would develop.</div><div>The paper starts with a discussion of the term <em>space safety,</em> of the fields it comprises, and of the concept of acceptable risk. Then it moves on to discuss in general the purpose and use of voluntary consensus standards, to make clear that safety standards are a special category of standards, and to illuminate the difference between standards and regulations. Finally, the paper presents the key principles according to which the ICSSS would operate, the different groupings of standards, and the concept of proceeding by phases in expanding the scope of the standardization activities.</div><div>The first phase of the cooperation would concern launch and re-entry safety, and spaceports safety.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":37283,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Space Safety Engineering","volume":"12 3","pages":"Pages 481-486"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Space mission safety assurance: Cybersecurity attack scenarios and risk assessment","authors":"Sakurako Kuba ,&nbsp;Radu F. Babiceanu","doi":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.07.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.07.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Cybersecurity threats to critical infrastructure have advanced beyond traditional concerns such as data breaches and financial extortion, evolving into sophisticated attacks by nation-state and organized criminal entities. In particular, Space-based infrastructure faces unique vulnerabilities, where cyber intrusions can disrupt satellite operations, degrade critical services, and compromise the safety of crewed missions. The current absence of robust legal frameworks and comprehensive cybersecurity provisions within international space regulations poses significant challenges to mission resilience and incident response. Concurrently, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) into space systems introduces both operational advantages and novel cybersecurity risks. The lack of normative guidance or “soft law” for AI-driven space applications further amplifies these vulnerabilities, increasing the overall mission safety risk. This study proposes a goal-oriented attack tree framework to systematically identify and analyze emerging cyberattack scenarios relevant to space operations. Each scenario is evaluated using a safety risk matrix based on the likelihood of occurrence and potential operational impact. Additionally, this paper surveys existing AI/ML implementations in space systems and describes the unique threat vectors. The proposed framework aims to advance cybersecurity risk management practices and extend the preventative scope against cyber threats, particularly those affecting satellite navigation and mission-critical systems.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":37283,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Space Safety Engineering","volume":"12 3","pages":"Pages 560-570"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Research and analysis on safety design of AI technology applied to space system","authors":"Shengxin Jiang,&nbsp;Jie Gao,&nbsp;Rui Zhang,&nbsp;Xinhua Zhang,&nbsp;Wei Zhu,&nbsp;Liming Ren","doi":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.05.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.05.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, AI is frequently talked about and debated in space systems. The strong interaction between AI and space systems is an exciting new field, as the autonomy of AI systems enables them to continuously monitor space debris and satellite orbits in real time, calculating the potential risk of collisions. By predicting dangerous approaching in advance, AI systems suggest or even execute maneuvers automatically to avoid collisions, ensuring the safety and longevity of satellites. This will help break through the current limitations of available resources and personnel costs, and promote new developments in the field of space exploration. However, every benefit brought by AI in space systems may have opposite risks manifested as potential attack, infiltration and compromise. Because AI systems have autonomous consciousness, the unpredictability of their behaviour can introduce uncontrollable situations to people, which in turn affects the completion of space missions. Therefore, the current problem caused by the combination of AI and space exploration is that people cannot be assured with the reliability and safety of space systems that utilize AI technology.</div><div>In response to the above problems, this paper takes AI technology in space systems as the research object. Firstly, it investigates the application progress of AI technology in space systems. And the classification of AI technology in space systems is preliminarily determined according to current mainstream research theory or standard. Considering the high-risk environment such as radiation and temperature change, the key points of safety design for AI in space systems are analysed from the data, model and system. The rough set theory based on genetic particle swarm optimization is used to reduce attributes, and the focus of safety design for AI in space systems is further optimized.</div><div>The authors hope that through the research of this paper, the level of AI technology in space systems can be clearly elucidated, providing a solution for effectively assessing the factors of safety design for AI in space systems, and strengthening the significant benefits of AI driving the development of space systems.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":37283,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Space Safety Engineering","volume":"12 3","pages":"Pages 493-500"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exhaustive probabilistic risk assessment for space applications including common causes","authors":"Emilien Genet ,&nbsp;Marco Giugliarelli","doi":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.07.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.07.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) is crucial in identifying causes and controls, and assessing residual risks in safety-critical industries. The Artemis mission aims to establish human safe permanence in space, necessitating adapted safety evaluation tools. NASA has led PRA complexity in space based on its manned flight history, while Europe lacks PRA standards like ECSS, despite mandatory Fault Tree Analyses (FTAs) for crewed missions. Thales Alenia Space proposes enhancing PRA modeling in FTAs by quantifying Common Cause Failure (CCF) events and integrating Safety mitigations in PRA. The proposed methodology improves estimates residual risks, with explicit CCF modeling over outdated approaches and specific tailoring for space vehicles and hazards. Proof on concepts on Gateway manned modules demonstrates benefits of this PRA approach for safety panels and industry, to minimize biases. Our results show the need for international consensus and standardizations on quantitative FTA methods for the space projects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":37283,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Space Safety Engineering","volume":"12 3","pages":"Pages 396-404"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Space rider’s maiden flight payloads/experiments safety acceptance process","authors":"Luca Santoro,&nbsp;Lucio Gradoni,&nbsp;David Le Falc’her,&nbsp;Gianni Truscelli,&nbsp;Dante Galli","doi":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.07.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.07.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As part of the Space Rider mission, experiments will have the opportunity to spend around two months in orbit. The types of experiments vary significantly, resulting in highly diversified risks which needs to be managed at individual payload level, aggregate level and Space Rider’s re-entry module level, in order to ensure mission success at all levels.</div><div>Additionally, as the mission will be launched from French Guiana, the Space Rider mission shall obtain its launch authorizations from the French Authorities, through a submission process based on two aspects. Firstly, the demonstration of the correct identification and management of the hazards generated by the mission and secondly by showing compliancy to the various French regulations and to the ESA Space debris mitigation rules.</div><div>As the maiden flight of Space Rider might embark at least fourteen experiments, a simplified approach based on each experiment hazardousness is followed in order to lighten the whole authorizations process and facilitate experiments safety inputs provision.</div><div>Firstly, by performing such simplified approach, it appeared that several experiments present very similar hazards, hence allowing to provide homogenous design recommendations and requests to all experiment owners. Additionally, it enables clear feedback to potential new experiment owners, based on previous communication with similar experiments.</div><div>Secondly, by placing the focus almost entirely on experiments with hazards above a pre-determined severity threshold, such streamlined acceptance process demonstrates its ability to save time by reducing workload. This enables faster and more concise communications with the French Authorities responsible for Space Rider Safety assessment towards the French Guiana Space Center regulation [<span><span>3</span></span>].</div><div>Finally, by aiming to synthesize the risks of all experiments from the onset, it required early technical exchanges with all potential experiment owners, allowing to gain an extensive understanding of possible hazards to mitigate and design choices to recommend or request.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":37283,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Space Safety Engineering","volume":"12 3","pages":"Pages 443-446"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"ASTROBEAT: Advancing cold-welding technology for in-situ spacecraft repairs","authors":"Leonardo Barilaro ,&nbsp;Stefano Lopresti ,&nbsp;Lorenzo Olivieri ,&nbsp;Mark Wylie","doi":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.08.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.08.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper presents an overview of ASTROBEAT, an innovative in-orbit mission to investigate cold-welding as a new method for repairing spacecraft hull damage caused by hypervelocity impacts. The experiment is a technology demonstrator, launched on November 5, 2024, aboard a SpaceX CRS mission, to test cold-welding under microgravity conditions on the International Space Station (ISS). The phenomenon, which involves the fusion of similar metals at ambient temperatures under high contact pressures, benefits from the space environment, where the absence of reoxidation facilitates atomic diffusion, enabling bonding at reduced forces. The ASTROBEAT experimental setup, housed within a 1 U cube Nanolab installed on an ISS rack, incorporates material test beds, a hull perforation repair device, and custom electronic and data acquisition systems. The core experiment involves preloaded springs delivering controlled forces to metal pairs (CuSn4 and Al-2024T) designed to simulate patch applications for spacecraft hull breaches. A pico-camera monitors the actuation process to ensure successful deployment, while electrical resistance measurements provide real-time data on the welding process. Functional testing and in-orbit operations showed that ASTROBEAT worked nominally. Post-flight, the payload will be recovered for further analysis. By demonstrating the feasibility of cold-welding for spacecraft repair, ASTROBEAT addresses a critical gap in standardized in-situ maintenance solutions, enhancing spacecraft safety and enabling long-term sustainability in space exploration.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":37283,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Space Safety Engineering","volume":"12 3","pages":"Pages 405-418"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A narrative review of solar electric propulsion for space missions: Technological progress, market opportunities, geopolitical considerations, and safety challenges","authors":"Alberto Boretti","doi":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.07.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.07.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) is an advanced technology ideally suited for long-duration space missions requiring high efficiency and low-thrust propulsion. SEP systems generate propulsion by converting onboard electricity, using electric thrusters powered by solar arrays. This review offers a comprehensive analysis of both established and emerging thruster technologies, including electrothermal (ET), electrostatic (ES), and the evolving electromagnetic (EM) thrusters, while considering mission-specific factors such as power availability, propellant choice, and spacecraft mass that influence thruster selection. The performance of SEP systems largely depends on solar arrays, typically utilizing III-V multijunction solar cells, which offer superior sunlight conversion efficiency compared to alternatives like perovskite cells, concentrated photovoltaics, and silicon heterojunction cells. Despite SEP's advantages—such as high efficiency, extended mission duration, and reliability— it faces challenges, including the requirement for large solar arrays and reliance on sunlight. However, ongoing research continues to enhance SEP technology, making it increasingly vital for future space exploration and scientific missions. The market outlook for SEP is promising, and its significant geopolitical implications highlight the necessity for stronger international collaboration in space ventures. Solar electric propulsion offers significant benefits for satellite and spacecraft operations but also poses safety challenges. Addressing collision avoidance, radiation protection, plume interactions, and end-of-life disposal is crucial. Ongoing research and collaboration among stakeholders will be essential for developing effective safety protocols and regulatory frameworks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":37283,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Space Safety Engineering","volume":"12 3","pages":"Pages 549-559"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108247","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A critical analysis of reentry debris uncertainty and international coordination efforts","authors":"Kayla Bigham,&nbsp;Rachita Puri","doi":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.07.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.07.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The recent rapid advancement of commercial space operations has highlighted high levels of reentry debris modeling uncertainty and the lack of efficient international coordination for exchanging information to ensure these operations are conducted safely. One such source of modeling uncertainty occurs in aerothermal demise predictions of debris fragments while performing flight safety analysis for controlled reentries. Using current models, predicting aerothermal demise for any type of reentry with a high degree of certainty is a time and resource intensive process due to a lack of data, the introduction of new materials, and the complexity of current models. Another layer of uncertainty is introduced for cases of uncontrolled or random reentry of an object. For random reentry cases, there is limited capability to predict when and where debris will impact Earth’s surface.</div><div>Advancements in understanding of the risks from space operations, including controlled reentries, debris from launch, and random reentries, will allow countries to have higher certainty when a particular area may be exposed to risk. Existing international frameworks and processes are not agile enough to enable efficient data sharing, communication, or real time operational coordination for mitigating hazards from these space operations. Given the differences in jurisdiction, issues of sovereignty, lack of standardized procedures, and the ambiguity in implementing international space laws and treaties, the high degree of uncertainty in the risk predictions poses additional challenges with respect to the implementation of safety measures such as warnings and closures.</div><div>This paper investigates how improvements will be needed to safeguard public safety for reentry operations across the globe, by highlighting shortcomings in modeling ability and opportunities for increased operational coordination and communication with international partners.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":37283,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Space Safety Engineering","volume":"12 3","pages":"Pages 475-480"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A comparison of spacecraft collision detection strategies using a virtual conjunction dataset","authors":"Giacomo Curzi ,&nbsp;Dario Modenini","doi":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.06.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.06.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Conjunction assessment in the field of collision avoidance<span><span> is customarily based on a single or a fusion of collision risk indexes. There are several risk indexes proposed in the literature, yet the authors could not find a comparative study of such indexes that was based on the miss detection performance. Miss detection is in fact one possible target parameter when choosing an actionable threshold and is a good candidate for high-traffic conditions. This work applies and compares four different detection strategies i) Probability of Collision, ii) </span>Mahalanobis distance<span><span>, iii) Wald Sequential Probability Ratio test<span> and iv) Gaussian<span> Belief Function on a common dataset of virtual conjunctions, measuring the performance on the Receiver-Operating-Characteristic (ROC) plane (detection rate – vs – false alarm rate). The virtual conjunction dataset offers an unprecedented realism in both the geometry and the true </span></span></span>collision rate of candidate conjunctions given some orbital scenario. Using this dataset, we estimate the realistic performance of the detectors. Results indicate that all the examined risk indexes offer a performance linkable to the miss detection rate. However, the classical Probability of Collision can underperform with respect to the Mahalanobis distance detector, which might be preferred for its simplicity instead.</span></span></div></div>","PeriodicalId":37283,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Space Safety Engineering","volume":"12 3","pages":"Pages 532-541"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Space vehicle reliability assessment for selected medium space powers","authors":"Contessa G. Norris,&nbsp;Robert A. Bettinger,&nbsp;Travis M. Grile","doi":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.06.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jsse.2025.06.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div><span>This research examines space launch vehicle (SLV) and satellite reliability trends through a variety of statistical methods such as the first-level Bayesian estimation and the Weibull distribution for France, India, Israel, Japan<span>, and South Korea. Datasets derived from the Seradata database included the following information: launch date, inactive date, launch country, satellite owner country, vehicle family, satellite name, orbit category, satellite status, mass category, event, event date, and event remarks. The first-level Bayesian estimation and success rates were calculated for 538 SLV launches from each country’s first launch date to 31 December 2023. Overall, 51 launches were failures, making up 9.48 % of total launches for the countries analyzed; 57.8 % of launches were sent to </span></span>low Earth orbit (LEO) while 4.28 % were sent beyond geosynchronous/geostationary orbit (GEO-GSO). Of 18 SLVs analyzed, 6 vehicle families exhibited realized success rates above 90 %. Since 1965, 809 satellites were launched, with a 1.98 % failure rate. The primary cause of failure was due to the satellites, inability to transmit signals, making communication, command, and control unattainable. Ultimately, through Weibull distribution, satellites owned by France, India, Japan, and South Korea showed a decreasing failure rate over time while results from Israeli satellites were inconclusive.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":37283,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Space Safety Engineering","volume":"12 3","pages":"Pages 513-531"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}