Severe thunderstorms across Texas to the southern Appalachians pose risks of damaging winds, large hail, a couple of tornadoes, and potential flooding through Wednesday. A late-season snowstorm will continue to produce heavy snow over parts of the central Rockies, possibly resulting in travel disruptions, downed trees, and power outages. Read More >
1. Who is the Spaceflight Meteorology Group: how many, what background, what organization?
The Spaceflight Meteorology Group consists of 1 NOAA / National Weather Service meteorologist, 1 NASA meteorologist, and one part time contractor meteorologist at the present time. Staff numbers increase and decrease with NASA crewed space program requirements. Current support is for the NASA Orion and NASA Commercial Crew Programs. SMG meteorologists have at least a B.S. in meteorology and typically have M.S. degrees in meteorology or related fields.
SMG is contracted by NASA to support the crewed spaceflight program and operates on a "reimbursable" agreement between NASA and NOAA/NWS.
In addition, a small group of CSOC software and electrical engineers provide support to SMG's Meteorological Interactive Data Display System (MIDDS).
2. Who provides operational weather analysis and forecasts to the space program?
Two organizations provide most of the operational weather support to NASA crewed space programs:
SMG is an integral part of the Flight Control Team in the Mission Control Center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The JSC Flight Director leads the flight control team and is responsible for all operational decisions regarding NASA orbital flight and crewed landings. The Flight Director has immediate, direct interface with SMG forecasters who monitor weather conditions at all the possible landing sites. On occasion SMG forecasters will provide meteorologic advice for Earth observation photography and other experiments.
Flight Directors and Flight Control Team members work directly with SMG meteorologists between missions to evaluate and revise weather Flight Rules, receive in-depth weather training, participate in ascent and entry simulations, review launch and landing times based on climatology, and resolve weather questions and issues concerning all crewed landing sites.
Other Department of Defense organizations provide weather observation support to the NASA crewed space programs. Notably, the USAF 412OSS at Edwards AFB, the White Sands Missile Range Meteorology Branch, and various units assigned to the USSF 45th Operations Group all provide surface weather observations, upper air measurements, and other support at landing or splashdown sites all around the world.
3. How can SMG forecast the weather for worldwide landing sites from Houston?
SMG accesses, decodes, and displays a tremendous amount of data for the crewed spacecraft landing sites. This includes a full suite of digital model output from the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), mesoscale network data, worldwide surface and upper air observations, NWS and military text data, and high-resolution weather satellite imagery from NOAA's GOES-East, GOES-West, EUMETSAT's Meteosat Third Generation, and JMA's Himawari. Many of these datasets are integrated and displayed via the NWS Advanced Weather Information Processing System (AWIPS) and the JSC Meteorological Interactive Data Display System (MIDDS). SMG receives a full suite of WSR-88D radar products. During launch and landing countdowns, SMG has hot-line access to landing site observers, and can direct the flight paths of weather reconnaissance aircraft.
Many kinds of weather can be hazardous to a landing spacecraft. Thunderstorms, rain, hail, high winds, turbulence, low clouds, fog, and other weather can pose problems for the vehicle.
Thunderstorms may contain extreme turbulence and wind shears that could structurally damage the spacecraft. Natural or triggered lightning could disrupt flight avionics or damage the structure. Precipitation such as rain can damage the thermal protection system when flown through at high speeds, interfere with navigation and communication systems or impact parachute performance for capsules. Winds at the surface and aloft affect the trajectory of the vehicle. In addition, for splashdowns ocean wave properties impact the landing as well as recovery force abilities. This is only a short discussion of the landing weather hazards.
6. Are you hiring?
Working at SMG and providing decision support services to NASA is exciting. If staff openings occur the position will be advertised at www.usajobs.gov and competition will be strong.
