Space Transition Corridors in the National Airspace System

Abstract

The importance of managing air and space traffic interactions will increase as the frequency of commercial space operations increases in the future. It is desirable that commercial operators of both aircraft and spacecraft receive equitable access to the shared resource of the National Airspace System while maintaining a high level of safety by protecting air traffic from possible spacecraft malfunctions. Current operational practice is conservative, reserving large volumes of airspace over a substantial time window. Space transition corridors are 4-dimensional envelopes, tailored to the trajectories of spacecraft during their launch and reentry flight phases, that provide a safety buffer without imposing excessive re-routing/delay costs on air traffic. Corridors with various spatial and temporal parameters were modeled in a simulation study, using air traffic re-routing distance as a performance metric. It was found that distance penalty contours can provide a basis for conducting tradeoffs within a corridor’s temporal design space (time window duration vs. window midpoint time). A tool based on these contours could be useful for launch and reentry planning to reduce re-routing/delay costs for aircraft flying in the vicinity of spaceports while maintaining safety.