WASHINGTON — The Federal Aviation Administration has began to scale back the quantity of airspace it closes for launches from Cape Canaveral as a part of efforts to limit the impact of growing launch activity on business aviation.
The FAA recently introduced a revised zone of restricted airspace around and lengthening offshore for a lot of launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the Kennedy Space Center. The revised zone keeps open airspace to the north of the spaceports that had previously been closed for all launches.
By doing so, the FAA said in a June 15 statement, it keeps open a key arrival route for business flights from northeastern U.S. to airports in central Florida, notably Orlando International Airport and Tampa International Airport. For a typical launch, the unique restriction would require up to a few dozen flights to be rerouted, causing as much as 300 cumulative minutes of delay.
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The revised airspace restriction will likely be used for launches on eastern or southern trajectories, the FAA said, based on risk analyses conducted for each launch. Launches that go on more northerly trajectories, corresponding to missions to the International Space Station, will proceed to make use of the larger zone.
The move is a component of broader efforts to handle the conflicts between launches and business aviation, particularly in Florida’s congested airspace. In April, the FAA released a set of things when considering whether to permit a launch to proceed or ask the launch company to discover alternative windows for the launch.
Amongst those aspects are the timing of the launch, particularly relative to holidays or other special events that cause increases in air traffic, and the duration of the launch window. “The FAA encourages business space operations to happen during nighttime hours (to the extent practicable) when other flight operations are inclined to be reduced,” the rules state.
The document added that the FAA will prioritize missions for national security or otherwise within the national interest, in addition to business launches carrying payloads.
“The main focus really is on Florida as we move forward,” said Duane Freer, manager of space operations for the FAA’s air traffic organization, during a May 15 meeting of the FAA’s Business Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC). He noted 92% of launches that affect the national airspace system are from the Cape.
One ongoing area of concern is launch scrubs. Freer said the FAA has been encouraging launch operators to tell air traffic control of scrubs as soon as possible, including before airspace closures go into effect.
A separate effort is the Space Data Integrator (SDI), a tool to automate the distribution of knowledge from launches and reentries to air traffic controllers, enabling more dynamic management of airspace and reducing the scale and duration of airspace closures.
Freer said on the COMSTAC meeting that full integration of launch and reentry data into air traffic management systems won’t be accomplished until 2028, citing “budgetary constraints.” He said he didn’t know the way much additional funding could be needed to speed up that schedule.