Data for MSc Thesis: `Consensus-based single-score life cycle assessment for space missions'

<strong>General information</strong>This dataset is part of the MSc thesis `Consensus-based single-score life cycle assessment for space missions' at Search results | TU Delft RepositoriesAn older version of the dataset was also used for the conference paper `A Consensus-Based Single-Score for Life Cycle Assessment of Space Missions: Preliminary Results', which can be found through the DOI 10.13009/EUCASS2023-571, or on EUCASS's website (www.eucass.eu - EUCASS Full Papers)<br><strong>Abstract of the thesis</strong>With a continuously growing number of satellites in orbit, it becomes increasingly important to assess their impacts on the Earth's environment in a standardised manner. While interest in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for space missions has gained in strength in the past few years – particularly in Europe – no consensus has yet been reached on a single-score LCA system. In this thesis, a consensus-based space LCA single-score is created through an international survey of experts. The report demonstrates retroactively the single-score’s use for the ecodesign of the Delft University of Technology’s Delfi-n3Xt space mission. A discussion is also held on ways of implementing the single-score into early design phases. Overall, this thesis highlights the importance of an easy-to-understand LCA tool for space systems. It shows the necessity for a tool that is implementable during the design phase of the mission, to incentivise space actors to further consider environmental impacts.<br><strong>Contents of the dataset</strong>This dataset contains Excel sheets with:the analysed answers of the survey done to reach a consensus on a space LCA single-scorethe results of Delfi-n3Xt's LCAthe calculations made to obtain the recommended weighting factors.<br><strong>Important note:</strong>A specific README.txt file is part of this dataset and is recommended to be read first