Mosaic ATM attended the 6th annual Space Traffic Management (STM) Conference held at the University of Texas at Austin on February 19 -20, 2020. The conference was a forum for both the Space and Air Traffic Management communities to discuss issues pertaining to managing space traffic in the atmosphere, outside of the atmosphere and in the global community. Technical topics were presented on Space Situational Awareness (SSA), Space Law and Policies, Security Concerns, and Airspace/Orbital Space Integration. Participants from around the country and world participated both in person as well as online. Mosaic ATM presented a paper based on work conducted for the FAA to generate the Space Vehicle Operations (SVO) Concept of Operations (ConOps). This work was supported by Mosaic ATM back in 2016, and some highlights of that work along with ideas of how to advance it were presented at the STM Conference. The basic principle of the SVO ConOps is to minimize air traffic disruption during space launch and landing events. Today, when there are space launch/landing events large portions of airspace are closed for hours at a time. With the predicted increase in space launch/landing activities in the next 10-years, this is not a sustainable solution. Changes to how the National Airspace System (NAS) is managed to better integrate space launch/landings will require a shift in operations and possibly even roles and responsibilities of operators. The concepts detailed in the SVO ConOps require human factors studies, which can be lengthy endeavors. The time to start these studies is now in order to meet the anticipated increase in space vehicle operations.
Categories: ConferenceNews
