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What's New at SMG?
Deputy Secretary of Commerce visits Johnson Space Center
Deputy Secretary of Commerce Ted Kassinger visited the Spaceflight Meteorology Group (SMG) on October 14, 2004.
Mr. Kassinger toured the SMG operations area, received a demonstration of AWIPS and MIDDS, and was briefed on the weather "problem of the day". NASA Flight Director Steve Stich
described the importance of weather support to the manned space flight program, and outlined Shuttle Return-to-Flight efforts.
Mr. Kassinger also visited the NASA Space Radiation Analysis Group (SRAG), which advises Mission Control on space weather information supplied by the
NWS Space Environment Center. Finally, Mr. Kassinger received a tour of Space Shuttle and International Space Station Mission Control Centers.
17 May 2004 NOAA Administrator and NWS Director Visit SMG
NOAA Administrator VADM Conrad Lautenbacher and NWS Director Brig. Gen. D. L. Johnson visited SMG on
May 17, 2004. The NOAA and NWS leaders were briefed on SMG operations and viewed demonstrations of SMG's
customized AWIPS and MIDDS systems as well as SMG's mesoscale modeling results. NASA JSC
Deputy Director Robert Cabana and Ascent/Entry Flight Director Norm Knight welcomed VADM Lautenbacher and Brig. Gen. Johnson and
described SMG's critical support function to NASA.
22 April 2004 SMG Users Forum
The Spaceflight Meteorology Group (SMG) held the second Weather Users Forum (WUF) at the Johnson Space Center on March 23, 2004. The WUF concept is to meet
with SMG customers a few times a year for discussions about shuttle related weather issues. This forum is an organized and systematic process for gathering customer
input and feedback to help SMG provide better products and services. Action items resulting from the forum are tracked, updated, and reviewed between meetings. Improved
and enhanced SMG products and services have already resulted from the first WUF meeting held in August 2003.
Attendees at the March 2004 WUF included NASA flight directors, astronauts, flight dynamics and trajectory flight controllers, ascent and descent wind analysts, USAF launch
weather officer, Kennedy Space Center Weather Projects Manager, and the Applied Meteorology Unit program manager. Weather operations topics included shuttle weather flight rules,
upper wind forecasts, emergency landing site forecasts, and weather equipment (hardware and software) upgrades.
NASA JSC flight directors gave a special presentation on the impact of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board return-to-flight requirements on space shuttle
weather support. Another presentation was given by the Applied Meteorology Unit on their launch imaging study to support return-to-flight requirements.
2 January 2004
Monthly Building 30 weather summary for December 2003 and the annual 2003 summary are
now online.
29 December 2003
Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS) Model Data Available for Florida Domain
SMG has begun running the ARPS mesoscale model over a Florida domain in support of space launch and landing
operations. Our experimental ARPS makes a 9 hour forecast run 4 times per day at 03 UTC, 09 UTC, 15 UTC, and 21 UTC with specialized forecast graphics available hourly.
The old ADAS information page has been deleted. Information on our new ADAS runs may be viewed at our new ADAS page.
28 October 2003
The NWS Spaceflight Meteorology Group was awarded the prestigious Department of Commerce Bronze Medal in a
ceremony near Washington DC on October 24, 2003. The award was "For rapid and innovative actions in collecting,
archiving, and analyzing weather radar data to assist the Shuttle Columbia accident investigation."
The Bronze award was shared with NWS Southern Region Headquarters, the NWS Radar Operations Center, the NOAA National
Severe Storms Laboratory, the NESDIS National Climatic Data Center, and the NWS Warning Decision Training Branch.
The NWA Operational Achievement Group Award for a signficant
contribution to operational meteorology was presented to SMG meteorologists Tim Oram, Tim Garner, and Richard Lafosse. The
award was presented at the annual NWA Conference on October 22, 2003. The award noted, "As part of the NWS/NASA Spaceflight
Meteorology Group, they provided extraordinary consultant support to NASA and performed outstanding intra- and interagency collaboration
following the tragic break-up of the Space Shuttle Columbia."
24 October 2003
Some new ADAS graphics are being posted since we've made some changes to our ADAS runs. We'll be
describing some of the modifications and providing additional graphics soon.
1 May 2003
Building 30 weather for April was quite dry with only 1.39 inches of rain measured. The
Building 30 weather observations page has been updated to output 8 point compass wind directions
in addition to the degrees measured. Look for more frequent updates and less data latency with the Building 30 weather
observations page in the near future. The Building 30 meteogram graphic has been expanded to 72
hours of data. Also look for more and faster ADAS and Workstation Eta graphics coming soon.
24 February 2003
The Spaceflight Meteorology Group is working with NASA and other agencies in the investigation of the Columbia
tragedy. Read all about it here.
13 January 2003
The STS-113 post mission weather summary has been added.
7 January 2003
Unofficial JSC climate records for Bldg. 30 from 2002 are now on-line. STS-113
landed December 7 after a record 3 days of weather delays. Look for the STS-113 post-mission weather summary soon. Read
about the upcoming STS-107 flight in our pre-misson weather summary.
1 November 2002
The STS-112 post-mission weather summary has been posted. Also the
annual and October 2002 climate pages have been updated on our JSC Climate
Pages.
8 October 2002
Climate data has been updated on the JSC Climate page.
11 July 2002 STS-111 Post Mission Summary and More Climate Data!
The STS-111 post mission weather summary has been posted. Weather played
a large role in launch and landing. Bad weather at KSC forced the landing until End-of-Mission + 2 days for
only the 6th time in Shuttle history. Also additional monthly summaries for JSC have been posted on the new
JSC Climate Page with more to come.
2 July 2002 New Climate Page
New climate data from the unofficial observations at JSC have been added from previous months. Visit our new JSC
Climate page. We'll be slowly adding more data as time goes by.
2 May 2002 Read About Weather Support for the Last Space Shuttle Mission and the Upcoming Mission
The pre-mission weather support summary for STS-111 is on-line as well as the STS-110 post-mission
summary. Also the JSC Annual Weather Summary has been updated.
17 April 2002
Ground tracks for the Space Shuttle (during missions and when security precautions allow) plotted over the world
satellite mosaic are being posted on the SMG Home page. When a Space Shuttle is not flying we plan on putting the
International Space Station grounds tracks on the image. Please be sure to check the UTC times plotted on the image. This
product is still experimental and timely delivery to the internet is not gauranteed. We may add a larger version of the satellite image and
ground track on a supplementary web page. Another source for orbital tracking
information is at the NASA Human Space Flight web.
15 April 2002
Historical weather support for the Mercury, Gemini, and
Apollo programs have been added. Several old pages have been upgraded to the new
corporate look and this work will continue.
3 April 2002
Links for Weather Safety and Lightning
Safety Awareness Week added to home page. Also the March, April, and
2002 Annual JSC weather summaries are on-line. The JSC Weather Summary pages will likely be getting a new
look sometime this month as we add more historical data on-line. Look for some great updates to the SMG history this month
as Tim Oram has created some interesting pages describing SMG support to the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab programs. Lastly, it
is almost certain that we will begin overlaying the ISS or current Space Shuttle groundtracks on the global color mosaic satellite
imagery sometime this month.
21 March 2002
The STS-109 post-mission summary has been put on line. Read all about weather for the last Space Shuttle mission. Information about
the next Space Shuttle mission is on-line at our STS-110 pre-mission summary.
9 March 2002
Maximum and minimum altimeter setting added to JSC Building 30 monthly weather summaries.
26 February 2002 New Corporate Image for NWS Web Pages
SMG is following the rest of the National Weather Service with a new "corporate" image
look to our web site. Initially only the home page has changed, but expect more
changes to our web in the coming weeks.
10 January 2002 Testing new JSC Weather Observation Page
We'll be testing a new look for the lastest observations from JSC over the next few days. Along
with a new look is additional data. Dew point is regularly calculated. Wind chill will appear in remarks when the observed
temperature is 40F or less. The heat index will appear in remarks when the observed temperature is 80F or more.
2 January 2002 Updated JSC Climate Summaries
Happy New Year! Climate observations from JSC for December 2001, January 2002, and the 2001 Annual summary have been posted.
We plan on putting more of this data on our website soon so stay tuned.
3 December 2001 Previous Monthly JSC Weather Summary Added
Two months of JSC weather observation summaries are now on-line, the current and
previous months. November was dry until the very last week at JSC when 6.07 inches
fell in 3 days. For comparison, the monthly total at Houston Intercontintal Airport was 2.58 inches and at Galveston
Scholes Field was 4.33 inches. Also the annual summary has been updated.
29 November 2001 STS-108 Premission Summary On-line
Information about the upcoming mission to the International Space Station is available.
9 November 2001 Graphical depiction of past 24 hours of JSC weather
Meteogram of measurements from JSC weather sensor during the past 24 hours is online.
31 October 2001 SMG Conducts Flight Controller Training Course
The Spaceflight Meteorology Group conducted an all day training seminar for NASA Space Shuttle support personnel on October 30,
2001 at the Johnson Space Center. Thirty-five NASA and contractor personnel attended.
The title of the seminar was Weather Support for Manned Spaceflight Operations. Wayne Baggett, SMG Training Coordinator,
managed the course. Wayne and most SMG staff members participated as instructors. ASA Monical Sowell handled all correspondence
and administrative matters. Monica also prepared the individual student binders containing course handouts.
Attendees were mostly NASA flight controllers, mission support personnel, and training specialists who direct mission simulations.
Most students have backgrounds in engineering.
The previous SMG training seminar was held in September 1998. Course materials and presentations are updated prior to each class
to reflect changing mission requirements and flight rules. Student evaluations from the seminar are used to streamline and to make
the seminar more job-related.
17 October 2001 SMG Meteorologist Receives NWA Aviation Meteorology Award
Tim Oram of SMG received the 2001 National Weather Association (NWA) Aviation Meteorology Award. Tim was honored along with Col. Tim Miner
of the USAF Reserve for developing and implementing the highly successful
"Thunderstorms and Flying" internet weather course. This course was hosted on the NWA web site www.nwas.org. Over 2200 students registered for the course and
over 80,000 website visits were recorded for the course in April, May, and June 2001. The six-lesson effort was a collaborative effort of
many aviation-oriented groups and received excellent reviews. The Aviation Meteorology Award was presented at the 26th Annual NWA Meeting in
Spokane, Washington on October 17, 2001.
13 October 2001 JSC Building 30 weather observations are back online after a long hiatus. Monthly
and annual reports will be updated soon.
5 October 2001 Mesoscale Modeling Efforts On the Web
SMG mesoscale modeling efforts are gaiing momentum. Selected products from our locally run ARPS Data Analysis System (ADAS) and
workstation Eta models are being posted to the web. SMG's version of ADAS is run over a Florida domain.
ADAS web products are posted about once per hour. The workstation Eta model is
currently run over a Spain and northwest Africa domain for Transoceanic Abort Landing site support.
2 October 2001 SMG Begins New Training Initiative
SMG began a new training initiative in response to a request from the NASA Astronaut Flight Office. SMG will provide regular
briefings on various topics in aviation weather on the first Tuesday of every month as a part of refresher ground training for
NASA astronaut pilots.
SMG Training Coordinator Wayne Baggett provided the first briefing on October 2, 2001. The topic was aircraft icing. The
briefing was adapted from a NWS Western Region aircraft icing presentation. Fourteen astronaut pilots attended and the briefing
was well received. Other SMG staff members will be participating in future briefings.
SMG is working on collecting training materials from various aviation weather sources to be used for references.
1 October 2001 New colorized global satellite mosaic image added to SMG home page.
25 August 2001 SMG participates in NASA/JSC Open House
SMG had the biggest crowd ever through its weather operations area in support of the Johnson Space Center's (JSC) Open House.
Once again it was held on a hot August Saturday in conjunction with the Balloonar Liftoff Festival. The Balloonar Liftoff Festival
is a hot air balloon event held on the grounds of JSC. Over 100 balloons could be seen floating over JSC on Saturday morning.
The combined events attracted over 140,000 visitors. Over 10,000 people visited SMG to see how weather forecasting is done for
the Space Shuttle, International Space Station, and Crew Return Vehicle. For the second year, SMG was able to showcase AWIPS
displays of realtime satellite and radar imagery as well as McIDAS displays of mesonet data at Shuttle landing sites. SMG
personnel gave short briefings and answered questions. SMG participants at Open House were Doris Rotzoll, Monica Sowell, Karl
Silverman, Wayne Baggett, Steve Sokol, and Tim Oram. Several staff members spouses and children helped out as well.
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