Why a future commercial spacecraft must be able to SWIM

Abstract

Regarding current as well as future commercial space transportation (CST) projects, new re-entry trajectory profiles, differing from capsule and shuttle-like approaches, have to be taken into account. These characteristics are mainly ruled by the principle of “landing like an aircraft at an airport” (XCOR, 2015) (DreamChaser, 2015) (Spaceliner, 2015). This directly generates the need to be taken in a system wide information management (SWIM) consideration because of the fact, that all the future air traffic participants are requested to act as SWIM communicating sub-systems by the future Single European Sky Air Traffic Manamement Research (SESAR) SWIM "Intranet for ATM" concept.

The presented solution is a SpacecraftReentryHazardAreaService via SWIM whereby an interested client submits the data of an approaching spacecraft in Flight Information eXchange Model (FIXM) format and gets back the potential hazard area as an Aeronautical Information Exchange Model (AIXM) formatted Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) providing information on the airspace affected and the associated dimensions. This information can then be used for map display purposes, as an assistance information layer on Controller Work Positions (CWP) as well as via Aircraft Access to SWIM (AAtS) on on-board Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) solutions.

Against the background of the global character of future CST operations and the associated SWIM harmonisation need referring the U.S. Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) and SESAR, the solution bases on the already harmonised data format standards AIXM and FIXM.