Satellite based ADS-B for Commercial Space Flight Operations

Kurzfassung

The steadily increasing air traffic and commercial space traffic in particular on transcontinental routes or suborbital operations requires to extend the controlled airspace to those regions not yet covered by ground based surveillance. An ADS-B system with a strong focus on space-based ADS-B can provide global and continuous air and space surveillance to enhance the operation of spacecraft and spaceplanes in transit through the US National Airspace System (NAS) and Single European Sky (SESAR) and above. Such a system can overcome the prevailing surveillance constraints in non-radar airspace (NRA). The limitations of the different ADS-B systems will be discussed within the requirements for international operations. They have an influence on the performance requirements for Sat based ADS-B to allow minimized separation in NRA together with an impact on prevailing processes and flight safety standards for the integration of commercial space flight operations in the Air Traffic Management (ATM). Further, integration of the data to the information exchange concept of the System Wide Information System (SWIM) is proposed. Using a SWIM based service, spacecraft and spaceplanes can be integrated safely in the NAS/SESAR and in the worldwide system. Also applications for spacecraft tracking close to low earth orbits (LEO) during launch and reentry operation will be possible.