Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) Meeting, October 2022

NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel held a public session on October 27, 2022 to report on its third quarter 2022 review of NASA programs.

Among its findings and recommendations was that the International Space Station is operating “at risk” because NASA and the other ISS partners do not have an executable plan to deorbit the space station safely in an emergency. The panel raised this issue previously and was presented with a conceptual plan in 2020 that it thought would be finalized imminently, but technical and operational challenges emerged and they are reopening the recommendation.

ASAP made a number of other findings about the ISS, the commercial crew program, and the Artemis program that are summarized in a SpacePolicyOnline.com article posted that day: NASA SAFETY PANEL WARNS ISS OPERATING “AT RISK” FOR LACK OF DEORBIT PLAN.