For decades, the gateway to space has been through the Eastern and Western Launch Ranges (E/WRs). The collaboration of the governing agencies, FAA, USAF, and NASA provides a commercial alternative to past practice with greater reliance on telemetry and automation.

The need for mission assurance and public safety in all phases of flight, on-orbit operations, and reentry through mission planning, launch/reentry operations, streamlined telemetry processing, real-time situational awareness, and autonomous flight safety system (AFSS) use will drive launch operations and range costs down, increasing launch availability, and allowing Spaceport development at non-traditional launch locations. Today, industry has multiple new entrant’s vying for the projected increased capacity with re-entry operations; we must capture synergy with ascent tools and regulations must complement this concept. Further, government and commercial providers, with increasingly more responsibility, are required to ensure public safety in the event of a vehicle failure, driving the importance of launch data integration into National Airspace System  (NAS) operations.

The need for a cost-effective, reliable, accessible mission assurance and flight safety solution is imperative given the strategic importance to assure access to space. Implementation of an AFSS, coupled with the full spectrum of support from complete autonomy to situational awareness with man-in-the-loop awareness, is critical. This capability provides tremendous resource savings (people, hardware, financial) while meeting requirements.

Millennium explores the integration of AFSS technology, mission assurance planning, NAS integration, weather monitoring, surveillance, and streamlined telemetry processing systems providing real-time situational displays. Building on the E/WR heritage tools and our legacy of delivering telemetry-based mission assurance and flight safety expertise to the USAF, NASA, FAA and commercial space industry, Millennium’s overview of range automation can provide the industry with an integrated common approach to automate, plan, validate, assure, and execute affordable space launches and reentry operations anywhere in the world.