A conceptual framework for enhancing the international cooperation in a developing space market - Harmonization of International Standards for Space Industry

In general, a standard is described as an established norm or a requirement list. Standards can be developed as formal documents to establish uniform engineering and technical criteria. The standardization process may be achieved through an edict or it may involve the formal consensus of technical experts. Today, in the growing global technical market, standardization is still a developing process, although it has a high and increasing maturity level. The new phase of standardization of today is getting more and more to integration and communization of standards for several diverse areas. In today's emerging space industry, the countries and even organizations within the same country have very different, detailed and well-documented standards. Some of these standards are almost the same or strongly similar. While on the contrary, some of them may propose totally different perspective of solution to a common problem. This quantity and the quality level of the international standards for space market all over the world may be an indicator of the exigency of harmonizing and integrating them. The study presented in this paper aims to mine some of the very well-known and applied standards in space market all over the world, search for the possibility to come up with a common space standards framework, which may constitute a common technical language in this area in order to support international cooperation, performing secure space applications, space policy making and to contribute for the space for a developing world by bridging the developed space nations and emerging space nations.