NASA, FAA open discussions on regulating urban air mobility and transiting space vehicle traffic
The Aerospace Traffic Management Integration Committee monitors, evaluates and seeks to influence the direction of ATM technologies with a focus on efficiency, public safety and national security.
The momentum continued surrounding exploitation of the aerospace for unmanned aircraft systems, new point-to-point short and vertical takeoff and landing passenger vehicles, and transiting space vehicles. The U.S. military also made progress on aircraft development programs such as the Navy’s Blue Water Maritime Logistics UAS and the Air Force’s Agility Prime.
In January, NASA published its Vision Concept of Operations for its Urban Air Mobility Maturity Level-4. The document is a foundation for discussion about the development and integration of UAM. In June, the FAA published the Conops V1 for UAM, which states that with “traffic and commute times on the ground increasing, there will be an increasing demand and … due to economic scaling, the volume of UAM operations may increase substantially. … The increasing number of UAM operations may soon challenge the current capabilities of the ATM infrastructure and Air Traffic Control (ATC) workforce.” The Government Accountability Office’s January report on the FAA concept of a UAS traffic management ecosystem that it published in 2020 called that concept a “complex undertaking.”
In July, the FAA announced a prototype system to track space launch and reentry vehicles in near real time. The Space Data Integrator improves situational awareness for controllers, which speeds the safe reopening of airspace after launches to reduce impacts on airspace users. While launch and reentry operators monitor their missions and vehicles in real time, the FAA relied heavily on manual processes to retrieve and communicate space data. SDI will provide some much-needed automation.
Further evidence of looming airspace congestion is found in the high investor interest in electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Illustrative was the listing by Joby Aviation (a participant in the Agility Prime program) on the New York Stock Exchange in August. Joby plans to field an eVTOL aircraft as a fully certificated air taxi service in 2024. Investors, including Toyota Motor Corp., Uber Technologies and JetBlue, are collaborating to offer a door-to-door passenger service. According to the U.S. Air Force, there are now more than 200 companies that are developing cutting-edge vertical flight aircraft based on eVTOL technologies. The Agility Prime program is intended to speed the process of making these types of vehicles commercially viable.
Also carried over into this year was concern that Virginia-based Ligado Networks’ deployment of 5G service on frequencies neighboring those used by GPS receivers would interfere with those who rely on GPS, including civil and military aviation. Three U.S. senators introduced legislation in June that would require Ligado to cover the cost of replacement or repair of any affected receivers.
In August, the FAA opened a safety review of Boeing to investigate complaints that the Organization Designation Authorization — the unit that is authorized to make safety decisions on behalf of the government — may not have had the required autonomy. Should the FAA find that these concerns are justified, it could have wide implications for certification of aircraft, including the requirement for more FAA personnel to perform the function directly.
In November, the Russian Defense Ministry fired a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile at the Soviet-era surveillance satellite COSMOS 1408, destroying the satellite and creating a cloud of at least 1,500 “trackable” pieces of new debris in low-Earth orbit, U.S. Space Command said. The fragments prompted astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station to temporarily shelter in their docked Crew Dragon and Soyuz capsules.
Contributor: Charles Keegan
