Concept of a Planning Tool to support International Coordination for Space Exploration

Fourteen space agencies have developed a Framework Document for a Global Exploration Strategy (GES). One of the key objectives of this GES is to enhance the coordination and the cooperation between the space agencies. The GES Framework Document calls for an international Coordination Mechanism to be created and for a set of Planning Tools to share information about each agency plans for space exploration. In this paper, the concept of an information management tool to support coordination of international plans for space exploration is presented. The key purpose of this tool is to support the analysis of synergies, gaps and overlaps in Space Agency's interests and plans for future space exploration activities. It includes information on Space Agency's space exploration interests (themes and objectives), analysed long-term architectures for space exploration as well as planned missions and related payload. This tool will allow each agency to enter its own data using templates developed jointly by the space agencies. It will also permit the identification of common objectives and themes and the relative reference architecture that will be used by all space agencies for planning purposes. Copyright IAF/IAA. All rights reserved.