Safety Management Measures for National Defense Space Operations

While many nations are striving to achieve superiority in space force strength, their efforts in managing space safety at the level of national defense remain ambiguous. The Republic of Korea’s Ministry of National Defense deploys the concept of national defense safety management to provide measures for preventing safety accidents including space accidents. The scope of safety management for a space force encompasses potential collisions between military satellites and orbital debris, as well as errors by space force operators. While global efforts are underway to mitigate satellite collisions with orbital debris, lessons from aviation safety underscore the need for systematic approaches. The approaches of Swiss Cheese Model applying the principles of latent conditions and active failures can be thought providing an effective framework for managing operational errors in large organizations like a military. This study suggests safety management measures for national defense space operations based on lessons leaned from Swiss Cheese Model.