Launch pads on Florida's Atlantic Coast face some of the most extreme weather conditions of any launch complex. Everything from lightning and hail to hurricanes and occasional frost make it important to meteorologists to get accurate data to back up their decisions. If they don't, acceptable launch windows could be missed, or worse, unnecessary risks could be taken.
A new comprehensive weather instrumentation system on Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center is providing up-to-the-second and extremely accurate measurements at different locations and altitudes. The improvements are expected to produce increasingly detailed launch criteria that could lead to more on-time liftoffs for a variety of rockets in the future.
Satellites have been busy this week covering severe weather across the U.S. Today, the GOES-13 satellite and NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of the huge stretch of clouds associated with a huge and soggy cold front as it continues its slow march eastward. Earlier this week, NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite captured images of severe weather that generated tornadoes over Louisiana.
Today the eastern third of the U.S. is being buffered by a large storm that stretches from southeastern Minnesota east to Wisconsin and Michigan, then south through the Ohio Valley and all the way down to eastern Louisiana. That massive storm system was captured in an image by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite called GOES-13.
It’s hard to believe that, in this day and age, we don’t have a way to measure sea-level air pressure during hurricanes. NASA researchers however, are working on a system that will improve forecasting of severe ocean weather by doing just that. The device measures sea-level air pressure, a critical component of hurricane formation – and one that has been extremely difficult to capture.
The Differential Absorption Barometric Radar (DIABAR) prototype is scheduled to make its second flight early this year.DIABAR remotely senses barometric pressure at sea level, which is important in the prediction and forecasting of severe weather, especially hurricanes over oceans.
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