But returning three rockets wouldn’t be possible with the traditional system that safety crew members use to track a rocket after it launches—and to blow it up if it deviates from its path in a way that poses a risk to the public. Officials from the Air Force’s 45th Space Wing, which is in charge of safety for launches from Florida’s coast, are equipped to track and destroy only two objects flying simultaneously. The new technology, which the Air Force calls the autonomous flight safety system (AFSS), does not have this limitation.

The potential benefits go deeper than that, though. Rocket launches traditionally require extensive ground communications infrastructure, and humans monitoring this data from the ground must send a command to the rocket to destroy it if necessary. The AFSS instead relies on GPS onboard the rocket to determine whether it has deviated from a programmed safe flight path, and if the rocket must be detonated, the system will do so on its own. The new system requires only 82 workers on the ground, compared with 245 for the old one, and much of the infrastructure is no longer required. This significantly cuts the cost of a launch, and the Air Force needs much less time to prepare for it.

The AFSS will help increase launch capacity and meet the rising demand for commercial space launches in the U.S., says Brigadier General Wayne Monteith, commander of the 45th Space Wing and director of the Eastern Range, a rocket and missile launch range operated by Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. In addition to the impending rise of space tourism, a number of firms aim to launch large “constellations” of small satellites for imaging, telecommunications, and other applications (See “A Big Bet on Small Satellites”).

The system can also track a rocket further down range than the conventional system, which loses control of the rocket once it flies beyond the line of sight. And it can destroy an errant vehicle several seconds sooner than a human can. It would function mostly the same way if the rocket were carrying people, but the passengers would have time to bail out before the system blew itself up.