FAA: NEW TOOL LIMITS DISRUPTIONS CAUSED BY SPACE OPERATIONS

Federal regulators said they now can better track rocket launches and space vehicles returning to Earth, which could cut the amount of time that airplanes must be routed around space operations.

The Federal Aviation Administration said a new tool automates the near-instantaneous delivery of data about a space vehicle’s flight path to the nation’s air traffic control system.

The tool, called the Space Data Integrator, will replace a system in which much of the work of giving telemetry data about space vehicles to air traffic control managers is done manually.