The SpaceX launch pad is seen from the window of Air Force One at Kennedy Space Center, Wednesday, May 27, 2020, in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Evan Vucci | AP
WASHINGTON — Space firms are launching more rockets than ever, ratcheting up competition for air space just as travelers return to flying in droves — and leaving the Federal Aviation Administration in the center to maintain things moving.
The FAA has long been accountable for overseeing U.S. airspace, mitigating air travel disruptions as a result of weather, military events or technical glitches. Add within the rapidly expanding space launch market, and the complicated puzzle-work of creating room within the skies gets all of the more delicate.
A few of the agency’s strategies for addressing the growing demand include minimizing the time airspace is closed and expanding beyond popular travel spots like Florida to launch sites as distant as Alaska.
“Space is affordable now. Operators can get to space and it isn’t just nation states, it’s now private firms — that is an enormous change within the paradigm,” said Duane Freer, manager of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization Space Operations office.
“We have made significant strides in lessening the impact and managing the airspace far more efficiently for launch and reentry missions,” Freer told CNBC. “It wasn’t that way back that SpaceX was a recent company and these were all notional ideas.”
The FAA managed U.S. airspace for a record-breaking 92 space missions in 2022, up 33% from the yr prior, and it expects to top that this yr. That number includes each rocket launches and capsule reentries, and has been steadily climbing.
Most of last yr’s missions launched from Florida, straining airspace in a state that already has a novel air traffic control challenge: the Sunshine State has drawn an increasing number of travelers lately and faces frequent thunderstorms several months a yr.
Airlines operated 722,180 flights to, from and inside Florida last yr, marking a faster recovery to pre-pandemic flying levels within the state than the national average. Miami International Airport announced 2022 was a record-breaking yr for passengers.
That airline volume means a rocket launch, even one which’s routine and on schedule, can pose a big challenge to passenger airlines. Disrupting airspace out of Florida affects routes over the Atlantic Ocean, Freer said, calling those flights the “really big, heavy hitters.”
That may swing the airspace priority tug-of-war within the airlines’ favor: In a single instance, Freer recalled, his office talked down the National Aeronautics and Space Administration when the space agency was considering an try and launch its lunar Artemis I mission in the times immediately before and after Thanksgiving.
“We worked very collaboratively with NASA on mitigating those impacts and truly eliminating those launch opportunities, since the impact to aviation would have been far too great,” Freer said.
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And the necessity to balance the influx of spaceflights against the needs of airlines is not letting up. Even when airspace is closed briefly, travel delays could last for much longer because the impact cascades to congested airports and crews day out for the day.
The FAA has spent the last five years debuting recent tools and modernizing systems for its teams and controllers. It met with airlines last yr to debate initiatives to alleviate congestion in Florida, and its Space Collaborative Decision Making committee, which works to integrate space operations into the national airspace system, will meet with airline executives at Southwest Airlines’ headquarters next month, the FAA said.
Competing priorities
Nearly all of last yr’s space missions were by Elon Musk’s SpaceX – which set a recent annual launch record for the corporate of 61 in 2022. It’s kicked off this yr at a blistering pace, too, with a launch every 4 days.
The remainder of last yr’s launches were made up of missions by NASA, Rocket Lab, United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin, Astra, Virgin Orbit, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Firefly.
Freer’s office acts as a liaison between space firms, ranges or spaceports, and air traffic controllers, though the FAA also plays a task in licensing and regulating launches. Crucially, the FAA talks repeatedly with the airlines, to closing wide swaths of airspace leading as much as, during, and after a launch.
“Generally the impact to the aviation community is in reroutes,” Freer said. “We do not see the standard delays – with ground delay programs or ground stops – related to launches.”
A Falcon Heavy rocket launches the USSF-67 mission on January 15, 2023 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
SpaceX
Rerouting means flying additional miles, which increases costs to airlines. Some airline CEOs have called out rocket launches as an extra obstacle in airspace that is already crowded with flights, in addition to military activity.
“Each time there is a recent change or a wrinkle, say, we’re coping with many more rocket launches and satellite launches out within the Florida coast … that impacts airspace,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said at a U.S. Travel Association conference in September.
“Air space goes to be a critical, critical issue,” Isom said, calling on recent industries to contribute to the price of air traffic control.
Airlines kick in funding for the federal agency through air ticket and fuel taxes. General aviation also contributes through fuel taxes. The space industry doesn’t have a formalized system for supporting air traffic control.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby last month, in discussing a recent FAA pilot-alert system outage that halted U.S. departures for several hours, said the agency has been stretched thin by the added workloads of dedicating resources to space launches, drones and aircraft certification.
“They’ve needed to rob Peter to pay Paul,” Kirby said on his company’s earnings call last month. “They were asked to do more, and so they’re doing it with less money.”
Reducing disruptions
Freer said the FAA doesn’t track understand how many flights are rerouted due launches, saying “it’s unattainable to find out” as a result of a wide range of potential aspects, equivalent to weather, military activity, or an airline’s own decisions.
Since 2018, the FAA has cut airspace closures in half for launches: From a mean of greater than 4 hours to simply over 2 hours today – at the same time as short as half-hour in some cases – with airspace reopened as quickly as three minutes after a rocket travels through the closed area. The agency has recovered a mean of 127 minutes per launch, Freer said.
The FAA can be increasingly licensing launches in additional geographical areas. In 2022, the agency licensed 50 space launches from Florida, 13 from California, nine from Latest Zealand, 4 from Texas, two from Virginia and one from Alaska.
A graph of FAA-licensed or permitted industrial space launches (excludes launches licensed by other U.S. government agencies, equivalent to NASA or the Department of Defense).
FAA
Amongst quite a lot of variables, there are two significant time-sucks the FAA has to administer with regards to rocket launches: Windows and scrubs.
Each could also be rocket lingo, but they represent considerations which can be just as vital as a liftoff itself. A launch window refers to a time period, often several hours long, during which a rocket must get off the bottom to be able to reach its intended destination in space. A scrub represents when a countdown is postponed, and sometimes results in delays of a day or more.
Together they create a moving goal for space launches and the industrial airlines eyeing the identical air space.
A traffic situation display showing each aircraft, blue, and a airspace closure area for a rocket launch, red and yellow.
FAA
During the last five years, the FAA implemented eight major efforts to enhance airspace closure efficiency around launches. It’s introduced systems to assist reroute as few aircraft as possible — only those which can be flying into the planned flight path of a rocket — to cut back the time that airspace is closed on either end of the window, and to focus on key mission triggers, equivalent to when rocket fuel is loaded, to raised know when to shut and open airspace.
In need of a successful launch, scrubs will be just as disruptive to air traffic. A rocket countdown will be postponed or canceled up until the ultimate moments.
In 2022, the FAA counted 61 scrubs, which it defines as a launch that’s canceled inside 24 hours of an intended liftoff time. But overall, the on-time performance of launches improved in 2022 – at 76%, up from 62% three years prior, in accordance with the FAA.
Two years ago the FAA debuted certainly one of its most helpful tools yet: the “Space Data Integrator.” It tracks a rocket in near real-time, through data shared by the launch operator, and keeps the FAA updated in real time on the health of the rocket.
An indication of the Space Data Integrator tracking a rocket launch.
FAA
SDI “was an enormous step forward for us,” Freer said, noting within the case of a rocket failure his teams can hit a malfunction button and immediately create a debris area to maintain aircraft away.
“We now have the [rocket’s] position on that very same piece of glass with our aircraft … that is a big step forward for air traffic, and that basically points us to the long run where we’re truly integrating,” Freer said.
SpaceX currently participates within the FAA’s SDI to mitigate disruptions, and Freer emphasized that “lots of newer operators are working through that process.” Blue Origin and Firefly are a part of an onboarding process, he said, and are more likely to joining this system next.