Space Sustainability and Radiation Resilience: Increasing Spacecraft Reliability and Mitigating Space Debris - Academic, Scientific, Industrial and Policy Solutions to a Global Environmental Challenge
Day: Thursday 8 October
Time: 16:25 - 16:55
Location:
The rapid growth of space activities has intensified concerns about the long-term sustainability of Earth’s orbital environment. Space debris poses a systemic risk to satellites, critical infrastructure, and future missions, making it a pressing global environmental challenge that requires cross-sector responses.
This GNF session proposes a multidisciplinary panel discussion bringing together key actors from academia, science, industry, and policy to explore coordinated solutions.
The academic perspective, represented by EPFL, will address sustainable spacecraft design principles alongside advances in modeling space weather and ground-based monitoring of space debris. These approaches are essential for anticipating risks and embedding sustainability into mission lifecycles.
A central pillar of the discussion will be the scientific contribution of CERN, which will highlight its leading role in radiation monitoring in space and, crucially, in ground-based radiation testing of electronic systems. Radiation monitors based on CERN technologies have been used onboard Artemis II mission and recently deployed on the ISS. CERN’s irradiation facilities and expertise in high-energy particle environments enables rigorous characterization of space components against radiation effects. These contributions, part of CERN Innovation Programme on Environmental Applications (CIPEA), are essential to space sustainability, as an improved knowledge of space radiation environments and enhanced radiation resilience help reducing failure rates, limit the generation of additional debris, and increase mission longevity.
From an industrial standpoint, ClearSpace will present progress in active debris removal missions, highlighting technological readiness and operational challenges associated with in-orbit servicing and cleanup.
This will be balanced by a policy perspective from the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, addressing evolving international regulations, norms, and cooperative frameworks required to ensure responsible behaviour in space.
The session will show how coordinated efforts - drawing on the strengths of Swiss-based organizations - can contribute meaningfully to global initiatives, reinforcing international collaboration in addressing one of the most complex environmental challenges of our time.
