A key future challenge is maintaining public safety as the demands on the nation’s air space keep increasing from commercial and government space activities on one side and growing air traffic on the other. Part of this challenge is maintaining and evolving safety analysis capabilities that will enable the evolution of the existing Air Traffic Management System into the Space and Air Traffic Management System (SATMS). The Single Flight Path Risk Tool was developed to minimize the impact of space flight to aircraft operations while at the same time ensuring a level of safety acceptable to the public. The tool has two modes of operation. In the pre-mission planning mode, it enables the test planner to identify affected scheduled air traffic and potentially schedule the launch operation during the time of lowest air traffic density. In the real-time mission mode, it takes the air traffic picture and identifies what air traffic will enter the operational area of concern.

This tool gives the Flight Safety Officer (FSO) and Air Traffic Control (ATC) situational awareness regarding at risk air traffic during the operation. This allows the FSO and ATC to dynamically manage the air space as the launch operation progresses, as opposed to issuing a blanket NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) for a large area of air space. The Single Flight Path Risk Tool has been applied to a range of sample scenarios that demonstrate how the impact of space launch operations on air traffic can be significantly reduced. Destruct events are very rare, the vast majority of launch operations is nominal. The dynamic understanding of the Space and air traffic picture between the FSO and ATC facilitated by the Single Flight Path Risk Tool gives all users of the air space considerably more flexibility in managing the needs of their respective airspace users while guaranteeing an acceptable level of safety.