The John F. Kennedy Space Center, located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968, KSC has been NASA's primary launch center of human spaceflight. Launch operations for the Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs were carried out from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 and managed by KSC. Located on the east coast of Florida, KSC is adjacent to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). The management of the two entities work very closely together, share resources and operate facilities on each other's property.
An electrometer is an electrical instrument for measuring electric charge or electrical potential difference. There are many different types, ranging from historical handmade mechanical instruments to high-precision electronic devices. Modern electrometers based on vacuum tube or solid-state technology can be used to make voltage and charge measurements with very low leakage currents, down to 1 femtoampere. A simpler but related instrument, the electroscope, works on similar principles but only indicates the relative magnitudes of voltages or charges.
A radiosonde is a battery-powered telemetry instrument carried into the atmosphere usually by a weather balloon that measures various atmospheric parameters and transmits them by radio to a ground receiver. Modern radiosondes measure or calculate the following variables: altitude, pressure, temperature, relative humidity, wind, cosmic ray readings at high altitude and geographical position (latitude/longitude). Radiosondes measuring ozone concentration are known as ozonesondes.
The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) was a NASA-operated orbital observatory whose mission was to study the Earth's atmosphere, particularly the protective ozone layer. The 5,900-kilogram (13,000 lb) satellite was deployed from Space Shuttle Discovery during the STS-48 mission on 15 September 1991. It entered Earth orbit at an operational altitude of 600 kilometers (370 mi), with an orbital inclination of 57 degrees.
Project Vela was a project undertaken by the United States Department of Defense to develop and implement methods to monitor compliance with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty. This treaty banned the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, in outer space, and underwater, effectively meaning nuclear tests were only to be permitted underground.
The Scaled Composites Model 281 Proteus is a tandem-wing high-altitude long endurance aircraft designed by Burt Rutan to investigate the use of aircraft as high altitude telecommunications relays. The Proteus is a multi-mission vehicle able to carry various payloads on a ventral pylon. The Proteus has an extremely efficient design, and can orbit a point at over 19,800 m for more than 18 hours. It is currently owned by Northrop Grumman.
The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) was a joint mission of NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Twin satellites took detailed measurements of Earth's gravity field anomalies from its launch in March 2002 to the end of its science mission in October 2017. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) is a continuation of the mission on near-identical hardware, launched in May 2018.
The National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather research laboratory under the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. It is one of seven NOAA Research Laboratories (RLs).
Atmospheric electricity is the study of electrical charges in the Earth's atmosphere. The movement of charge between the Earth's surface, the atmosphere, and the ionosphere is known as the global atmospheric electrical circuit. Atmospheric electricity is an interdisciplinary topic with a long history, involving concepts from electrostatics, atmospheric physics, meteorology and Earth science.
A lightning detector is a device that detects lightning produced by thunderstorms. There are three primary types of detectors: ground-based systems using multiple antennas, mobile systems using a direction and a sense antenna in the same location, and space-based systems.
Launch commit criteria are the criteria which must be met in order for the countdown and launch of a space shuttle or other launch vehicle to continue. These criteria relate to safety issues and the general success of the launch, as opposed to supplemental data.
C/NOFS, or Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System was an American satellite developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate to investigate and forecast scintillations in the Earth's ionosphere. It was launched by an Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus-XL rocket at 17:01 GMT on 16 April 2008 and decayed on 28 November 2015.
The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission is a NASA robotic space mission to study the Earth's magnetosphere, using four identical spacecraft flying in a tetrahedral formation. The spacecraft were launched on 13 March 2015 at 02:44 UTC. The mission is designed to gather information about the microphysics of magnetic reconnection, energetic particle acceleration, and turbulence—processes that occur in many astrophysical plasmas. As of March 2020, the MMS spacecraft have enough fuel to remain operational until 2040.
45th Weather Squadron, 45th Operations Group, 45th Space Wing, at Patrick Space Force Base, Florida performs weather assessments for air and space operations; specifically, weather observations, forecasts, advisories, and warnings. It specialized in the weather assessments for the Space Shuttle launches at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
SARAL is a cooperative altimetry technology mission of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES). SARAL performs altimetric measurements designed to study ocean circulation and sea surface elevation.
The Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) is a satellite designed to investigate changes in the ionosphere of Earth, the dynamic region high in our atmosphere where terrestrial weather from below meets space weather from above. ICON studies the interaction between Earth's weather systems and space weather driven by the Sun, and how this interaction drives turbulence in the upper atmosphere. It is hoped that a better understanding of this dynamic will mitigate its effects on communications, GPS signals, and technology in general. It is part of NASA's Explorers program and is operated by University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory.
Joseph R. Dwyer is an American physicist known for his lightning research. He is a Professor of Physics at the University of New Hampshire. Dwyer received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago in 1994 and worked on cosmic-ray physics and gamma-ray astronomy as a research scientist at Columbia University and the University of Maryland before joining the faculty at the Florida Institute of Technology in 2000. After moving to Melbourne, Florida, Dwyer became interested in lightning physics and his research now focuses on high-energy radiation production from thunderstorms and lightning. In 2002, Dwyer and collaborators discovered that rocket-triggered lightning produced large quantities of x-rays, allowing for first the time detailed studies of an atmospheric phenomenon known as runaway breakdown. In 2014, Dwyer left the Florida Institute of Technology and joined the University of New Hampshire.
Herbert Grove Dorsey was an American engineer, inventor and physicist. He was principal engineer of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Radiosonic Laboratory in the 1930s. He invented the first practical fathometer, a water depth measuring instrument for ships.
Schiaparelli EDM was a failed Entry, Descent, and Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM) of the ExoMars programme—a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian space agency Roscosmos. It was built in Italy and was intended to test technology for future soft landings on the surface of Mars. It also had a limited but focused science payload that would have measured atmospheric electricity on Mars and local meteorological conditions.
Galileo was an American robotic space probe that studied the planet Jupiter and its moons, as well as several other Solar System bodies. Named after the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, it consisted of an orbiter and an entry probe. It was delivered into Earth orbit on October 18, 1989 by Space ShuttleAtlantis. Galileo arrived at Jupiter on December 7, 1995, after gravitational assist flybys of Venus and Earth, and became the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter.
