Description
The recent improvements in commercial space transportation have raised questions on methodology used for integrating space launched vehicles into the National Airspace System (NAS) regarding the risks to nearby aircraft. Current safety regulation procedures are used to safely integrate launch vehicles in the NAS by closing large blocks of airspace to any vehicle, this restrictions are known as hazard areas. Regulations cause commercial aircraft to reroute around hazard areas increasing flight distance, causing delays, and raising overall cost per flight. Air space restrictions are designed to decrease risk to the public, where the area and time of restriction are based on space vehicle profile. This paper describes a methodology to dynamically construct a risk level map on nearby aircraft due to space launch operations. The impacted area is divided into multiple sections with each section dynamically evaluated under a risk level, which is a comprehensive index considering debris uncertainty. To speed up the evaluation process for the projectile model, a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) based parallel computing framework is developed. Using a customized A* algorithm, an aircraft rerouting plan is generated under risk tolerance where a minimal time and distance trajectory can be found. Utilizing SpaceX Falcon 9 as a reference, rerouting models in this project are demonstrated to provide safe and efficient plans by comparing with the current method used.
