ORLANDO, Fla. – It’s been a rough weekend at the Orlando International Airport — hundreds of flights were delayed Saturday and Sunday and almost two dozen were canceled largely because of the rough weather.
The day after, on the busy President’s Day holiday, airlines are trying to get back on track.
But one thing is not adding to the delays: rocket launches.
And while you probably never realized how much rocket missions were slowing down your commercial flight, the FAA is well aware and has been taking steps to decrease delays as the cadence of rocket launches increases.
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Besides commercial aviation, the FAA also manages spaceflight — to manage commercial aviation. FAA officials have to sign off on every single rocket flight and often close airspace so planes don’t fly through a rocket launch.
When you’re flying, you probably have no idea the FAA has rerouted your plane for your safety. What you are very aware of though is when your flight is late.
Until last year, the FAA would close an entire cone of airspace around the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for every launch.
That would cause as many as 36 flights to be rerouted affecting more than 4,000 passengers delaying them all collectively as much as 5 hours.
Now the FAA only closes the airspace to the East and South of the launchpads since that’s the typical rocket flight path.
“Based on risk analyses conducted for every launch and working with the U.S. Space Force and space launch operators, the FAA determined the existing airspace restrictions for most Florida launches were too large and could be safely reduced,” the FAA said in a press release.
This change leaves the flight path open for most planes coming in from the Northeast. And that means for most launches there is no flight rerouting and no flight delay.
“Previously for a typical launch, up to 36 flights were rerouted to congested overland routes, slowing up to 4,300 passengers and resulting in upwards of 300 minutes of delay and 1,500 extra miles flown,” the FAA said. “These flights can now remain on their most optimal and efficient routes more frequently.”
And there’s something else: the FAA Space Data Integrator enables airspace reopening faster than ever before.
“This is done, in part, using the Space Data Integrator (SDI) tool that provides situational awareness by tracking the vehicle in near-real time including its position, altitude, speed and any deviation from its expected flight path,” the FAA said. “More than 70% of commercial space operations in U.S. airspace since June 2021 have sent SDI data to the FAA.”
The Integrator takes rocket trajectory data from the rocket launch companies and puts it on a screen for FAA spaceflight officials to track the rocket in real-time so they know exactly where the rocket is, where it is headed and when it has cleared closed airspace.
“While Launch and Reentry Operators (LROs) monitor their missions and vehicles in real-time, the FAA relied heavily on manual processes to retrieve and communicate space data,” the FAA said. “To monitor a mission, the FAA Air Traffic Organization (ATO) Space Operations team, located at the David J. Hurley Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC), would manually gather operational data and send the data using FAA communications tools to adapt airspace usage with launch and reentry operations. SDI will provide some much-needed automation to improve the current operation.”
How does it work?
“The SDI operational prototype is designed to accept launch and reentry vehicle state vector data gathered from operators such as vehicle position, altitude, and speed,” the FAA said. “SDI will then process the data, display it, and distribute it to Traffic Flow Management System (TFMS). SDI allows the FAA to track the actual versus planned trajectory of launch and reentry operations, the status of various mission events, and the display of Aircraft Hazard Areas (AHAs). SDI sends vehicle position and AHAs to the TFMS for display on the TFMS Traffic Situation Display at the Command Center.”
That’s why the FAA has been able to close less airspace for a shorter amount of time and reopen all airspace as quickly as three minutes after a rocket launch.
When the FAA grants a launch license for a rocket mission, officials consider the launch window - like if it’s on a busy holiday or if it’s during the day.
The FAA has been encouraging rocket companies to launch at night when fewer flights would be disrupted. That’s why many of the Space Coast’s launches are in the overnight hours.
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