Evolving Air Traffic Management towards an efficient integration of hypersonic air transportation

Abstract

The recent years have shown a significant technological advancement in the development of economically viable suborbital space vehicle concepts. As such, not only efficient and cost effective access to space but also a new concept of passenger transportation is becoming a realistic possibility. Considering concepts of very high-speed intercontinental passenger transport via suborbital point-2-point flights, the need for a safe and efficient integration of these hypersonic flights into the air traffic system is evident. As one specific kind of an increased number of space vehicles, they will pass through civil airspace and will evolve from rare special events to regular airspace users. Air Traffic Management (ATM) therefore has to play an important role in the effort to ensure a safe and efficient operation of hypersonic vehicles. The ATM integration concept has to follow a common approach which has to be flexible and resilient enough to handle the specific circumstances of suborbital flight operations. Ultimately, a seamless and efficient integration of hypersonic sub-orbital flights into the air traffic system has to be achieved. Therefore, the current handling of space vehicles (including hypersonic flights) within ATM should be evolved towards a concept that facilitates the requirements of trajectory based operations under the regimes of future Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) and the U.S. Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). A concept has been developed to address this challenge using the capabilities of the System Wide Information Management (SWIM) by dedicated services which allow for a robust ATM integration of such types of operation. The ideas behind this concept, its requirements and the results of a first prototypical implementation will be presented.