Range safety

In the field of rocketry, range safety may be assured by a system which is intended to protect people and assets on both the rocket range and downrange in cases when a launch vehicle might endanger them. For a rocket deemed to be off course, range safety may be implemented by something as simple as commanding the rocket to shut-down the propulsion system or by something as sophisticated as an independent Flight Termination System (FTS) that has redundant transceivers in the launch vehicle that can receive a command to self-destruct then set off charges in the launch vehicle to combust the rocket propellants at altitude. Not all national space programs utilize flight termination systems on launch vehicles.