ORLANDO, Fla. — As NASA inches closer to a future return to the moon, its first leap toward its moonshot goal — Artemis I — is planned to launch during the peak of hurricane season and could face a gale of problems.
NASA is targeting three potential launch days from Aug. 29-Sept 5. from Kennedy Space Center. Those dates also happen to be within the first half of what meteorologists refer to as the peak of hurricane season, which typically sees more Atlantic tropical storm production from mid-August to mid-October.
Statistically, the day with highest frequency of hurricane activity is Sept. 10 but the days leading up to it, from Aug. 15 onward, are when some of the most powerful hurricanes have been traditionally observed: hurricanes Andrew, Frances, Ivan and Katrina. That poses a potential problem for NASA’s launch pads and its 322-foot-tall Artemis I rocket stack hoping to launch from the most tropical-storm-prone state in the country.
“There is no shortage of weather phenomena that affect the East Coast – from thunderstorms and lightning strikes to hurricane season, weather continues to play a key part in preparing for tests and launches,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Protecting our teams that work on the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft is just as important as protecting the rocket and spacecraft itself.”
If a tropical storm or hurricane does emerge from Florida’s Gulf or east coast, NASA will refer to a series of protocols, which are intentionally conservative to minimize risk due to weather, said NASA spokesperson Justin Weiss.
Keeping its eyes on a safe sky, the Spaceflight Meteorology Group would provide its forecast to the launch director, identifying any potential risks.
“Depending on the severity of the weather, this can include standing down from a tanking or launch attempt, or returning the rocket to safety in the Vehicle Assembly Building to allow the storm to pass,” Weiss said.
That however, is not a quick process.
The Artemis rocket complex is composed of the Space Launch System, Orion capsule and mobile launcher. Their combined weight totals 5.75 million pounds. Artemis was rolled out to the launch pad this past week 12 days before its target launch, so if there is a problem there should be plenty of time to wheel the ship back into the VAB, which is about 4.4 miles from Launch Pad 39-B — an undertaking that takes about 10 hours, NASA said.
“Following the decision, teams will then assess for damages and then plan a forward path,” Weiss said.
Weather criteria preventing the launch can include a variety of potential dangers. One of the more obvious being lightning, which would delay a launch for 30 minutes if lightning is observed within 10 nautical miles of the flight path. A lightning threat even delayed the rollout this past week, but just for an hour.
In April, NASA faced a powerful lightning storm during an attempted wet dress rehearsal for Artemis, but delayed the test because of lighting striking the launch complex four times. At the time, Orion and the SLS core stage were powered up. Three of the strikes hit the launch pad’s “tower two” and weren’t of much consequence, but the fourth strike was a positive lightning strike — a rare and powerful lightning bolt — that hit pad 39-B’s “tower one” and activated the pad’s new lightning protection system.
“After more than 30 milliseconds, we still had almost 3,000 amps flowing through the ground,” said NASA’s Dr. Carlos Mata. “This particular event falls into that tiny percentage — less than 1% — that you just don’t expect to happen.”
It was the second positive strike to hit or come near hitting a launch pad in 11 years, but the 2011 strike was weaker than April’s lightning bolt, which was intercepted by the lightning protection system and transferred the lightning’s energy through catenary wires to the ground.
No damage was reported.
According to NASA, other weather factors the SMG monitors include:
—Thick cloud layers within 5 nautical miles, greater than 4,500 feet thick
—clouds with surface electric field, extend into freezing temperatures or contain moderate or greater precipitation
—solar activity resulting in increased density of solar energetic particles with the potential to damage electronic circuits and make radio communication with the launch vehicle difficult or impossible
So far, only three storms have been named during the 2022 season, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is forecasting 14 to 21 named storms before the Nov. 30 end of season. An average hurricane season has about 14 named storms, the NOAA said.
Hurricane specialists believe the 2022 season will be an above average year in storm numbers because of several factors including an ongoing La Nina that is likely to persist throughout the hurricane season and warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.
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