Autonomous flight termination system: The need for an international regulatory frame

Abstract

Among the unmanned launch service providers, the autonomous flight termination concept is no longer an unknown actor around the table. The goal of these systems is to limit the consequences of the potential feared events caused by a launch vehicle malfunction by automatically terminating the flight of the vehicle in a safe manner, replacing the human component on the traditional flight termination decision in case of failure.Although some public and private players have already designed (and even flown) an autonomous flight termination system, the problem arises when looking into the safety standards that need to be to be applied to launch from different locations, which are highly dependent on the respective safety authorities.This paper aims at analysing the gap in the current launch safety policies and proposing the guidelines to be followed to widen the range of spaceports capable of hosting a launch vehicle with such a feature.