{"id":43630,"date":"2025-11-08T23:14:49","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T15:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/the-government-shutdown-is-starting-to-have-cosmic-consequences\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T23:14:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T15:14:49","slug":"the-government-shutdown-is-starting-to-have-cosmic-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/the-government-shutdown-is-starting-to-have-cosmic-consequences\/","title":{"rendered":"The government shutdown is starting to have cosmic consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"

The federal government shutdown, now in its 38th day, prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a temporary emergency order Thursday prohibiting commercial rocket launches from occurring during \u201cpeak hours\u201d of air traffic.<\/p>\n

The FAA also directed commercial airlines to reduce domestic flights from 40 \u201chigh impact airports\u201d across the country in a phased approach beginning Friday. The agency said the order from the FAA\u2019s administrator, Bryan Bedford, is aimed at addressing \u201csafety risks and delays presented by air traffic controller staffing constraints caused by the continued lapse in appropriations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government considers air traffic controllers essential workers, so they remain on the job without pay until Congress passes a federal budget and President Donald Trump signs it into law. The shutdown\u2019s effects, which affected federal workers most severely at first, are now rippling across the broader economy.<\/p>\n

Sharing the airspace<\/h2>\n

Vehicles traveling to and from space share the skies with aircraft, requiring close coordination with air traffic controllers to clear airspace for rocket launches and reentries. The FAA said its order restricting commercial air traffic, launches, and reentries is intended to \u201censure the safety of aircraft and the efficiency of the [National Airspace System].\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement explaining the order, the FAA said the air traffic control system is \u201cstressed\u201d due to the shutdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith continued delays and unpredictable staffing shortages, which are driving fatigue, risk is further increasing, and the FAA is concerned with the system\u2019s ability to maintain the current volume of operations,\u201d the regulator said. \u201cAccordingly, the FAA has determined additional mitigation is necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beginning Monday, the FAA said commercial space launches will only be permitted between 10 pm and 6 am local time, when the national airspace is most calm. The order restricts commercial reentries to the same overnight timeframe. The FAA licenses all commercial launches and reentries.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Launch times are driven by various factors, most prominently the mission\u2019s destination. Launches going to specific orbits, like that of the International Space Station, have narrow windows to get off the ground each day. The ISS, for example, flies in an orbital path that remains fixed relative to the Earth. The planet\u2019s rotation brings a spaceport under the station\u2019s orbital plane at specific times each day, and this determines when a rocket heading for the ISS is able to take off.<\/p>\n

SpaceX is, by far, the most active US launch company, and most of SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket launches deploy its own Starlink Internet satellites. SpaceX has some flexibility in scheduling Starlink launches because the network, comprising nearly 9,000 active satellites, flies in dozens of orbital planes at different altitudes and inclinations. In the short term, SpaceX could choose to target orbital planes that are reachable at night.<\/p>\n

Other missions have immovable launch windows. The next launch of Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn rocket, scheduled for 2:45 pm EST (19:45 UTC) Sunday, will deploy two NASA satellites heading for Mars. The particulars of that mission\u2019s trajectory necessitate an afternoon launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.<\/p>\n

NASA signed a commercial contract with Blue Origin for this weekend\u2019s launch, making it a commercial mission licensed by the FAA. The space agency saved money by taking this approach instead of going with a more traditional contract with government oversight.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear whether NASA could ask for a waiver if the New Glenn launch delays into next week. The situation with the New Glenn launch puts Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who also serves as NASA\u2019s acting administrator, in the unique position of potentially requesting and granting such a waiver.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The payload fairing of Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn rocket, containing NASA\u2019s two Mars-bound science probes.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Blue Origin<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Another commercial SpaceX launch, currently scheduled for Tuesday, will deliver numerous small satellites into a specific type of Sun-synchronous orbit. For SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket to reach this orbit, it must lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Station, California, in the late morning, local time.<\/p>\n

United Launch Alliance was supposed to launch a large commercial communications satellite for Viasat this week, but a hardware problem stood in the way of liftoff. The launch time, driven by technical requirements, was scheduled for shortly after 10 pm local time in Florida. But the launch time gets a few minutes earlier with each day of delay, meaning it will now likely fall within the FAA\u2019s curfew by the time ULA is ready to fly.<\/p>\n

There are a handful of upcoming missions that presumably won\u2019t be affected by the FAA\u2019s order. These include the launch of a US-European oceanography satellite later this month on a Falcon 9 rocket. NASA is responsible for authorizing the launch, meaning it doesn\u2019t require an FAA license. The same situation exists for launches for the US Space Force.<\/p>\n

Rocket Lab, a US-based company under the authority of the FAA, said launches from its primary spaceport in New Zealand are \u201cunaffected\u201d by the restrictions because they do not operate in US airspace.<\/p>\n

But the broader impacts of the shutdown are taking their toll on NASA. Ground crews at Kennedy Space Center in Florida have continued working to prepare for the launch of the Artemis II mission early next year, but civil servants and contractors are working without pay. Officials anticipate the shutdown will eventually impact the schedule for Artemis II, which will send astronauts to the vicinity of the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers in Washington, DC, are negotiating a possible end to the shutdown, but there\u2019s no indication of when a compromise will be reached. Democrats in Congress want to extend expiring tax credits to lower health insurance premiums. The minority party is also protesting cuts to Medicaid.<\/p>\n

The ongoing impasse broke the record this week for the longest government shutdown in US history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The federal government shutdown, now in its 38th day, prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a temporary emergency order Thursday prohibiting commercial rocket launches from occurring during \u201cpeak hours\u201d of air traffic. The FAA also directed commercial airlines to reduce domestic flights from 40 \u201chigh impact airports\u201d across the country in a phased approach […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43630"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}