The Space Triad Framework
Darren McKnight’s integrated model challenges conventional thinking by linking space security, safety, and sustainability into a unified operational strategy
The orbital debris crisis has reached a critical inflection point, with over 18,000 cataloged objects in low Earth orbit and an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 lethal non-trackable fragments threatening satellite operations. While traditional approaches have treated space security, space safety, and space sustainability as independent domains, Dr. Darren McKnight, Senior Technical Fellow at LeoLabs, has developed a holistic framework that recognizes these elements as intimately interconnected. Presented at the 9th European Conference on Space Debris in April 2025, McKnight’s Space Triad Framework proposes that actions in any one domain inevitably create ripple effects across the others, requiring coordinated strategies that acknowledge this interdependence. This framework challenges the spacefaring community to shift from studying distant environmental stability threats to addressing immediate spaceflight safety degradation, while simultaneously developing tactical responses to imminent collision risks among massive derelict objects.
The Three Pillars of Space Operations
The Space Triad Framework rests on three foundational pillars that collectively determine the viability of future space operations. Space security focuses on detecting and countering deliberate threats to orbital assets, leveraging space domain awareness capabilities to identify everything from reversible disruptions to irreversible destruction of satellites. This domain has gained renewed urgency as public research from China details potential methods to disrupt constellation operations using lasers and microwaves, extending security concerns into the commercial space sector.
Space safety centers on ensuring reliable satellite operations through space traffic management and collision avoidance. The rapid deployment of mega-constellations has transformed this domain from primarily warning operational spacecraft about orbital debris to coordinating ephemeris data and maneuver plans between multiple operators. However, coordination quality varies significantly across the global spacefaring community, with disparities stemming from both regulatory differences and fundamental trust deficits rooted in terrestrial diplomatic relations.
Space sustainability addresses long-term orbital environment preservation through debris mitigation and remediation activities. Current post-mission disposal guidelines require deorbiting within 25 years, yet many newly deployed constellations operate below 615 kilometers where abandoned objects naturally decay through these constellations over that timeframe. McKnight’s analysis reveals a troubling trend: since 2000, the average derelict mass abandoned in low Earth orbit has increased by 35 percent to approximately 1,100 kilograms, while operational payload masses have halved to around 450 kilograms. This counterintuitive development means smaller active satellites navigate around increasingly massive debris obstacles.
Critical Intersections and Operational Dependencies
The framework’s power lies in mapping how actions in one domain cascade across others. The most stark example involves deliberate satellite fragmentations for security purposes. China’s 2007 anti-satellite test generated over 3,500 fragments at high altitude, with more than 2,500 still orbiting decades later, creating persistent collision hazards across low Earth orbit. Russia’s November 2021 test produced over 1,800 fragments, causing SpaceX Starlink satellites to experience more than 6,000 close approaches months after the event. In contrast, the 2008 United States engagement of a hazardous satellite at low altitude with optimized engagement geometry produced virtually no long-term debris impact, demonstrating how operational execution significantly affects sustainability outcomes.
Active debris removal and on-orbit servicing technologies present dual-use challenges at the security-sustainability intersection. The same capabilities required to capture and deorbit defunct satellites could theoretically damage operational spacecraft, creating security concerns even for missions with stated sustainability purposes. Japanese company Astroscale addressed these concerns during its ADRAS-J inspection mission by implementing government guidelines, sharing real-time video, and conducting proximity operations only on approved targets. This transparency approach provided confidence that the mission served cooperative sustainability goals rather than covert security objectives.
The safety-sustainability nexus manifests most clearly in collision avoidance decisions. Risk reduction maneuvers prevent not only immediate mission damage but also debris-generating fragmentation events that compound long-term environmental hazards. The 2009 Cosmos 2251-Iridium 33 collision generated over 2,300 cataloged fragments, though fewer than 1,000 remain in orbit today. However, non-collisional fragmentation events from explosions represent the dominant debris source historically, underscoring why adherence to passivation standards proves crucial. The Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee reports that combined compliance rates for satellites reaching end-of-life since 2017 hover around 60 percent, insufficient to prevent environmental degradation. Extrapolating current launch activity at this compliance level suggests the debris population could double within 50 years, substantially increasing catastrophic collision frequency.
Key Players and Commercial Ecosystem
European Space Agency leads institutional efforts through its ClearSpace-1 mission, scheduled to remove the defunct Proba-1 satellite from low Earth orbit in 2026. This cornerstone project within ESA’s ADRIOS program aims to develop essential guidance, navigation and control technologies plus rendezvous and capture methods for uncooperative targets. Swiss company ClearSpace partnered with OHB to develop and operate the mission, tackling the complex challenge of capturing a 95-kilogram satellite never designed for removal.
Astroscale Holdings has emerged as the most operationally mature commercial player, completing the ELSA-D technology demonstration mission and currently performing ADRAS-J under JAXA‘s Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration program. The company secured selection for Phase II of CRD2, which targets removing a Japanese upper-stage rocket body from low Earth orbit. Astroscale’s dual involvement in Japanese and United Kingdom missions positions it as a key technology provider across multiple national programs.
The United Kingdom Space Agency is funding a national mission to remove two defunct UK satellites in 2026, with the removal spacecraft designed for refueling to enable multiple missions. Phase II selection for this program, expected in mid-2024, focused on understanding risks and costs associated with active debris removal operations. Northrop Grumman brings satellite servicing expertise from its Mission Extension Vehicle program, demonstrating capabilities directly applicable to debris removal.
LeoLabs provides the foundational space situational awareness infrastructure enabling both collision avoidance and debris monitoring. Operating six radars across four global locations with plans to add six to eight more, LeoLabs delivers persistent tracking of low Earth orbit objects, with goals to update every object every orbit and begin cataloging sub-10 centimeter debris. The company serves operational customers including SpaceX, OneWeb, NOAA, and Maxar, providing collision risk assessments and space incident investigations.
Emerging players include Altius Space Machines, developing robotic interfaces and docking systems like DogTag and MagTag technologies for satellite servicing and debris interaction. D-Orbit offers deorbiting solutions, while Airbus contributes satellite tracking and space situational awareness technologies including robotic arms and net-based capture systems. Kall Morris Incorporated distinguishes itself through patented software and hardware enabling spacecraft to conduct multiple debris collections while remaining in orbit.
Practical Implementation: Monitor, Characterize, Act
McKnight’s framework translates into three actionable strategies that shift orbital debris response from “study, wait, and hope” to “monitor, characterize, and act”. The first component involves systematically measuring spacecraft anomalies and failures attributable to debris impacts, providing direct metrics of environmental degradation effects on satellite operations. McKnight has organized Spacecraft Anomalies and Failures workshops in Chantilly, Virginia, attracting participation from NASA, National Reconnaissance Office, other government organizations, industry, and academia.
These deliberations revealed that most operators neither invest significant resources resolving unknown non-recurring anomalies nor share on-orbit failure data due to proprietary technology concerns, stakeholder confidence issues, national security considerations, and space insurance implications. McKnight proposes the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee take responsibility for planning and conducting annual international spacecraft anomaly workshops, generating impetus for information sharing that quantifies debris environment model fidelity. Increased anomalies and failures from the sub-10 centimeter population provide the best early warning indicator of worsening conditions before cascading collisions manifest.
The Massive Collision Monitoring Activity represents the framework’s second pillar, focusing on clusters of massive derelict objects with identical inclinations plus similar and overlapping apogees and perigees. These clusters potentially exhibit elevated collision probabilities beyond predictions from kinetic theory of gases algorithms, as their orbital element evolution creates resonances in collision dynamics. Thirteen major clusters contain over 480 massive derelicts totaling approximately 810,000 kilograms, representing more than 50 percent of total derelict mass in low Earth orbit.
The largest cluster comprises roughly 150 SL-8 rocket bodies at 950 kilometers altitude and 83 degrees inclination, each massing 1,434 kilograms for a combined 215,000 kilograms. Another critical cluster includes approximately 20 SL-16 rocket bodies at 850 kilometers and 71 degrees inclination, each weighing 8,300 kilograms for total mass around 100,000 kilograms. McKnight’s monitoring of SL-16 interactions from May 2015 to February 2016 documented eight passes within one kilometer, with the closest approach at 425 meters, plus 175 passes under five kilometers. One encounter sequence on August 13, 2015, saw two SL-16s pass within five kilometers over 14 consecutive orbits, with minimum separation of 526 meters.
Just-in-Time Collision Avoidance provides tactical response capability for imminent massive-on-massive collisions. The concept employs sounding rockets on ballistic trajectories releasing gas or small particle clouds in the path of potentially colliding derelicts, deflecting trajectories to prevent impact or widen miss distances to acceptable levels. NASA analysis indicates approaches for nudging large debris to avoid collisions offer credible paths to net benefits almost immediately upon entering operation, contrasting with active debris removal methods requiring years to decades for positive return on investment.
Just-in-Time Collision Avoidance costs approximately one to three million dollars per launch, roughly 1,000 times less expensive than active debris removal operations estimated at 140 million dollars per mission. While removal costs translate to one to three billion dollars per collision prevented given current proposals to remove 35 to 50 derelicts for statistical cleanup, Just-in-Time operations target specific imminent threats with dramatically superior cost-effectiveness measured by collision prevention. McKnight emphasizes these approaches complement rather than replace each other, with Just-in-Time operations preventing immediate catastrophes while active debris removal addresses frequent offenders and creates risk statistics informing removal priorities.
Economic Realities and Policy Implications
NASA’s 2023 cost-benefit analysis of orbital debris remediation identified removing small one-to-ten centimeter debris and nudging large debris to avoid collisions as the most effective risk reduction methods. The study evaluated remediating the Top 50 most concerning objects identified by McKnight and colleagues, finding associated benefits of approximately 3.5 million dollars in the first year, growing over time as risks compound. These benefits stem not from operational cost savings for maneuvering around debris but from reduced probability of debris-on-debris collisions generating significant amounts of small untrackable fragments that damage operational spacecraft.
Methods for removing non-trackable debris achieve net benefits in under a decade according to NASA modeling. Laser-based just-in-time collision avoidance approaches demonstrated immediate benefit-to-cost crossover in optimal use scenarios, though conservative usage estimates extended breakeven timelines. The analysis underscores that contrary to common concerns about prohibitive upfront costs and long benefit delays, some remediation approaches offer rapid returns.
The global space economy’s projected approach toward two trillion dollars by 2035 amplifies stakes for effective orbital debris management. As more countries view spacefaring status as essential for global standing and economic prosperity, regulatory and policy developments create potentially massive effects on nation states. The Space Triad Framework provides conceptual architecture for minimizing accidental deleterious actions by international space co-inhabitants while informing entities about transparency and responsible behavior benefits.
Current governance challenges include persistent waivers of debris mitigation guidelines for national security missions, with exact numbers unknown but evidence that security considerations sometimes override safety practices. Propensity toward secrecy has historically led countries to neither register sensitive payloads with the United Nations nor make orbital information public, contradicting UN Guidelines for Long-Term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities covering registration, contact information provision, and orbital information dissemination. However, proliferation of commercial space situational awareness capabilities is eroding ability to keep sensitive satellites classified, forcing evolution toward greater operational transparency that ultimately benefits spaceflight safety.
Future Outlook and Strategic Recommendations
The framework positions near-term priorities around shifting from environmental stability metrics to spaceflight safety indicators. Erosion of spaceflight safety through payload operations degradation and reduced operational lifetimes from debris impacts will occur well before runaway cascading effects manifest visibly. This reality demands more proactive debris remediation than currently envisioned, with typical proposals calling for five derelict removals annually starting at some indeterminate future time proving insufficient.
McKnight advocates for international coordination through institutions like the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee to advance the three-component strategy of anomaly characterization, massive collision monitoring, and just-in-time collision avoidance. Making spacecraft anomaly workshops international efforts could bring spacefaring countries together emphasizing how data sharing and joint analysis contribute to universal space flight safety, though challenges exist given difficulties obtaining information sharing even within United States-only environments.
Massive Collision Monitoring Activity requires minimal staffing, estimated at one full-time position, potentially enabling intermediate solutions where government agencies obtain data from the Joint Space Operations Center under existing arrangements before determining next steps. Just-in-Time Collision Avoidance development as an international effort could spread costs while supporting perception as non-confrontational, with McKnight suggesting United States government seed initial funding for joint demonstrations with CNES and the United Kingdom Space Agency within 18 months.
Five-to-ten-year projections see continued maturation of active debris removal technologies transitioning from demonstrations to operational deployments. European Space Agency’s ClearSpace-1 and United Kingdom’s dual-satellite removal mission in 2026 will validate technical approaches and inform cost models. Japan’s Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration Phase II with Astroscale addresses Japanese upper-stage rocket bodies, contributing operational data to international knowledge bases.
Longer-term scenarios spanning 10 to 20 years depend critically on whether spacefaring nations adopt holistic frameworks recognizing security, safety, and sustainability interdependencies. Continued deliberate fragmentations at high altitudes would compound environmental degradation beyond remediation capacity, while transparency in on-orbit servicing and active debris removal missions could reduce security tensions enabling faster technology deployment. The framework suggests that space security and space sustainability ultimately converge when broadly defined as ensuring confident, uninterrupted space operations, as few operators continue activities if orbital regions become debris-littered or conflict-fraught.
Conclusion
Darren McKnight’s Space Triad Framework represents a fundamental reconceptualization of orbital debris challenges, moving beyond siloed approaches to recognize that space security, safety, and sustainability form an integrated operational system. The framework’s practical components—systematic anomaly tracking, massive collision cluster monitoring, and just-in-time collision avoidance—provide actionable pathways addressing immediate spaceflight safety degradation while building toward long-term environmental stability. As the 9th European Conference on Space Debris presentation demonstrated, international receptivity to holistic frameworks is growing, with initiatives like the Journal of Space Safety Engineering establishing dedicated sections for security-safety-sustainability nexus research. The framework’s ultimate test will be whether it catalyzes the diplomatic, operational, engineering, and financial resource allocation necessary to transition from passive study to active monitoring and characterization, enabling responsible action before cascading collision dynamics render remediation economically or technically infeasible.
Editorial Notes
Sources: This article draws primarily from Dr. Darren McKnight’s technical papers presented at the 9th European Conference on Space Debris (April 2025) and the International Academy of Astronautics, supplemented by NASA’s 2023 cost-benefit analysis of orbital debris remediation, European Space Agency active debris removal program documentation, and commercial space debris removal market analyses. LeoLabs’ operational data and space situational awareness capabilities provided context for monitoring infrastructure. International Astronautical Federation biographical materials and presentations contributed to McKnight’s professional background.
Verification Limitations: Specific cost figures for just-in-time collision avoidance and active debris removal operations are based on 2015-2021 estimates and projections rather than operational mission data, as no active debris removal missions have achieved full operational status as of September 2025. Compliance rates for debris mitigation guidelines rely on Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee reporting to UN COPUOS, with acknowledged limitations in tracking all spacefaring entities. Estimates of lethal non-trackable debris population (500,000-700,000 objects) derive from statistical modeling rather than direct observation given current sensor limitations for sub-10 centimeter objects. Commercial company website verification was conducted but specific technology performance claims could not be independently verified without proprietary access.
Research Gaps: Limited public information exists regarding national security payload compliance with debris mitigation guidelines due to classification restrictions. Quantitative data on spacecraft anomalies and failures attributable to orbital debris remain largely proprietary across government and commercial operators, limiting ability to validate environmental degradation models. Specific details of just-in-time collision avoidance demonstrations remain conceptual pending operational testing. Long-term orbital dynamics modeling for massive derelict clusters requires additional peer-reviewed validation to confirm elevated collision probabilities beyond kinetic theory predictions. International coordination mechanisms for massive collision monitoring and just-in-time collision avoidance implementation lack defined governance structures.
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This article was produced with the assistance of A.I.