Range safety

Closure of surrounding areas Before each launch, the area surrounding the launch pad is evacuated, and notices to aviators and boatsmen to avoid certain locations on launch day are given. This facilitates the creation of a designated area for rockets to launch, called the launch corridor. Monitoring the launch , Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia|250x250px To assist the range safety officer (RSO) in monitoring the launch and making eventual decisions, there are many indicators showing the condition of the space vehicle in flight. These included booster chamber pressures, vertical plane charts (later supplanted by computer-generated destruct lines), and height and speed indicators. Supporting the RSO for this information were a supporting team of RSOs reporting from profile and horizontal parallel wires used at liftoff (before radar technology was available) and telemetry indicators. Now, the FTS is usually armed just before launch. By country United States rocket carrying the GOES-G satellite, launching from Cape Canaveral, was given the destruct command by the range 91 seconds after launch due to an electrical failure that shut one of the engines down. In the US space program, range safety is usually the responsibility of a Range Safety Officer (RSO), affiliated with either the civilian space program led by NASA or the military space program led by the Department of Defense, through its subordinate unit the United States Space Force. At NASA, the goal is for the general public to be as safe during range operations as they are in their normal day-to-day activities. All US launch vehicles are required to be equipped with a flight termination system. Range safety has been practiced since the early launch attempts conducted from Cape Canaveral in 1950. Space vehicles for sub-orbital and orbital flights from the Eastern and Western Test Ranges were destroyed if they endangered populated areas by crossing pre-determined destruct lines encompassing the safe flight launch corridor. After initial lift-off, flight information is captured with X- and C-band radars, and S-Band telemetry receivers from vehicle-borne transmitters. At the Eastern Test Range, S and C-Band antennas were located in the Bahamas and as far as the island of Antigua, after which the space vehicle finished its propulsion stages or is in orbit. Two switches were used, arm and destruct. The arm switch shut down propulsion for liquid propelled vehicles, and the destruct ignited the primacord surrounding the fuel tanks. The Cape Canaveral Space Force Station saw around 450 failed launches of missiles and rockets (of around 3400 total) between 1950 and 1998, with an unknown amount of flights ending by intervention of onboard or ground-based safety mechanisms. As of February 2025, the most recent confirmed activation of the flight termination system on a US rocket was during Starship IFT-7 in 2025. Eastern and Western Ranges For launches from the Eastern Range, which includes Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the Mission Flight Control Officer (MFCO) is responsible for ensuring public safety from the vehicle during its flight up to orbital insertion, or, in the event that the launch is of a ballistic type, until all pieces have fallen safely to Earth. Despite a common misconception, the MFCO is not part of the Safety Office, but is instead part of the Operations group of the Range Squadron of the Space Launch Delta 45 of the Space Force, and is considered a direct representative of the Delta Commander. The MFCO is guided in making destruct decisions by as many as three different types of computer display graphics, generated by the flight analysis section of range safety. One of the primary displays for most vehicles is a vacuum impact point display in which drag, vehicle turns, wind, and explosion parameters are built into the corresponding graphics. Another includes a vertical plane display with the vehicle's trajectory projected onto two planes. For the Space Shuttle, the primary display a MFCO used is a continuous real time footprint, a moving closed simple curve indicating where most of the debris would fall if the MFCO were to destroy the Shuttle at that moment. This real time footprint was developed in response to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986 when stray solid rocket boosters unexpectedly broke off from the destroyed core vehicle and began traveling uprange, toward land. Range safety at the Western Range (Vandenberg Space Force Base in California) is controlled using a somewhat similar set of graphics and display system. However, the Western Range MFCOs fall under the Safety Team during launches, and they are the focal point for all safety related activities during a launch. Range safety in US crewed spaceflight Even for U.S. crewed space missions, the RSO has authority to order the remote destruction of the launch vehicle if it shows signs of being out of control during launch, and if it crosses pre-set abort limits designed to protect populated areas from harm. In the case of crewed flight, the vehicle would be allowed to fly to apogee before the destruct was transmitted. This would allow the astronauts the maximum amount of time for their self-ejection. Just prior to activation of the destruct charges, the engine(s) on the booster stage are also shut down. For example, on the 1960s Mercury/Gemini/Apollo launches, the RSO system was designed to not activate until three seconds after engine cutoff to give the Launch Escape System time to pull the capsule away. The U.S. Space Shuttle orbiter did not have destruct devices, but the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) and external tank both did. After the Space Shuttle Challenger broke up in flight, the RSO ordered the uncontrolled, free-flying SRBs destroyed before they could pose a threat. The country is known for leaving rocket parts to fall back to Earth in an uncontrolled trajectory. In one case, a launch vehicle crashed into a village near Xichang Satellite Launch Center after veering off course, killing at least six persons. From the early 2020s, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) started developing and implementing methods to prevent uncontrolled reentries of their Long March rocket boosters, most prominently by the use of parachutes. Japan The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) regulates space activities through its Safety and Mission Assurance department. The regulation JERG-1-007E stipulates many of the safety requirements to be maintained on the range on launch day, violations of launch safety, and the procedures to follow after launch aborts and failures and during emergencies on the range. European Space Agency The ESA's primary launch site is in Kourou, French Guiana. ESA rockets employ flight safety systems similar to the US' despite the relative remoteness of the launch center. Range safety at Europe's Spaceport is the responsibility of the Flight Safety Team, with the launch site and surrounding areas being safeguarded by the French Foreign Legion. The earliest Ariane 5 rockets were controlled by flight computers with the capability to terminate a flight by own initiative, including the infamous Ariane 501 in 1996. In 2018, an Ariane 5 launcher carrying two commercial satellites veered off course shortly after liftoff. Ground control was shown a nominal course of the rocket until 9 minutes into the flight, when the second stage ignited and contact was lost. The rocket nearly flew over Kourou, and at the time the RSO realised that it flew closer to land than intended, it was decided not to terminate the flight out of concerns that the resulting debris would hit the town adjacent to the launch site. The two satellites were deployed into an off-target orbit and were able to correct their orbits with substantial losses of propellant. North Korea Range safety measures are performed during launches of the Chollima-1 orbital launch vehicle. On the successful third launch attempt of the rocket, it was reported that officials activated the flight termination system on the first stage after separation, presumably to destroy evidence in an effort to prevent reverse engineering if the booster or any of its remains were to be recovered by South Korea or allies. == Flight termination system ==

A flight termination system (FTS) is a set of interconnected activators and actuators mounted on a launch vehicle which can shut down or destroy components of the vehicle to render it incapable of flight. As it is the only thing that is able to ensure the safety of ground facilities, personnel and spectators during a rocket launch, it is required to be effectively 100 percent reliable. Flight termination systems are also frequently installed on unmanned aerial vehicles. To prevent other components from interfering with its decisions, the FTS has to operate entirely independently from the rocket; as such, it needs separate maintenance and comes with its own power source. In the case of multistage rockets and those utilizing side boosters, each stage and each booster on the launch vehicle is equipped with its own FTS. Crewed launch vehicles, with the exception of the Space Shuttle, have employed a launch escape system to save the lives of the crew in case their carrier rocket malfunctions. A flight termination system typically consists of two sets of the following components: in specific areas of the rocket, which initiates structural failure and renders the vehicle aerodynamically unstable. mounted on a Falcon 9 rocket On liquid-fueled rockets, the propellant tanks are cut open to spill out their contents. as an FTS is not allowed to detonate propellants and cause a violent explosion. cannot have their engines shut down, but splitting them open terminates thrust even though the propellant will continue to burn, as the explosive charges break the rocket and its fuel into pieces. In some cases, only the nosecone or top section of the solid propellant case might be removed from a solid rocket, with the risk that the remainder of the rocket explodes violently and cause injuries or damage upon impact with the ground or water. is sufficient to ensure flight safety. by its tanks colliding and cracking. This method was first proposed for the Titan III-M launch vehicle, which would have been used in the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program. == Autonomous flight safety ==

An autonomous flight termination system (AFTS), or autonomous flight safety system (AFSS), is a system in which flight termination can be commanded on a rocket without the involvement of ground personnel. Instead, AFTS destructors have their own computers that are programmed to detect mission rule violations independently of the launch vehicle and implement measures to bring the mission to a safe end. Since at least 1998, these systems have been developed to bring down launch costs and enable faster, safer and more responsive launch operations. Previously, inadvertent separation destruct systems had already been deployed to destroy parts of rockets, usually side boosters, autonomously when they were unintentionally removed or loosened from the remainder of the vehicle. NASA started developing AFSS in 2000, in partnership with the US Department of Defense, with its development being included in the Commercial Orbital Transportation System program. The system developed by SpaceX was demonstrated in F9R Dev1, a Falcon 9 booster used in 2013/14 to test its reusable rocket technology development program. In August 2014, after an errant sensor reading caused the booster to veer off course, the AFTS triggered and the vehicle disintegrated. The addition of AFTS has also loosened up the inclination limits on launches from the US Eastern Range. By early 2018, the US Air Force had approved a trajectory that could allow polar launches to take place from Cape Canaveral. The 'polar corridor' would involve turning south shortly after liftoff, passing just east of Miami, with a first stage splashdown north of Cuba. Such a launch corridor is not feasible with a ground-commanded system due to radio interference from the rocket's own exhaust plume facing the ground station. In August 2020, SpaceX demonstrated this capability with the launch of SAOCOM 1B. The AFTS on SpaceX's Starship exhibited considerable issues on its first flight. SpaceX expected the vehicle to be given the destruct command at the point the vehicle lost thrust vector control at T+1:30, but this was done much later. Upon activation, the explosive ordnance detonated as expected, but destruction was delayed; the vehicle was only destroyed at T+3:59, In August 2020, the European Space Agency announced that Ariane 5 has AFSS installed on the avionics bay. The AFSS onboard Ariane 5 is called KASSAV (Kit Autonome de Sécurité pour la SAuvergarde en Vol). A later version of the system, KASSAV 2, will have the authority to automatically terminate the flight in the event of the rocket going off course. The Japanese government has approved AFTS for use on the country's launch vehicles since the mid-2010s. The SpaceOne KAIROS solid-fuel rocket uses an AFTS; it was activated mere seconds into the vehicle's maiden flight because the speed and thrust of the launcher at liftoff was lower than intended. Future launch vehicles such as the Blue Origin New Glenn, United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur and ArianeGroup Ariane 6 are expected to have them as well. NASA's Space Launch System is planned to use an AFTS by the flight of Artemis 3. In 2020 NASA started developing the NASA Autonomous Flight Termination Unit (NAFTU) for use on commercial and government launch vehicles. Provisional certification of the unit was granted in 2022 for Rocket Lab's first U.S. Electron mission (from Wallops Flight Facility) in January 2023. ==See also==