Spaceflight Meteorology Group

Transcription

>> Dan Huot: Hey, everybody, Dan Huot, back here inside with the Spaceflight Meteorology Group, joined again by Frank Brody. Now, Frank is in charge of a lot of the work that this division of the National Weather Service does for monitoring human spaceflight, but you guys do a lot of work for the actual center here in Houston and, and the surrounding areas as well, being in a pretty tricky weather situation, like we are, being the Gulf. So why don't you start off, tell us a little bit about just some of the day to day stuff you guys do with weather alerts and things like that. >> Frank Brody: Well, the National Weather Service Spaceflight Meteorology Group is here, located at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston and one of our key duties is to forecast the weather for the local community and weather sensitive operations here at JSC. So we issue lightning advisories and lightning alerts, which tells the population and weather sensitive operations that there's lightning around and so they can take precautions. Also, if there's a tropical storm or hurricane, we will customize that information for the decision makers here at Johnson Space Center so that they can decide on whether to close the center or after the fact, when to reopen it. So we're here to provide that customized weather decision support for the decision makers here at Johnson Space Center. >> Dan Huot: So Mission Control in -- it runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. So in the event of a potential contingency that a hurricane could cause, you guys are the ones that are feeding them the information and letting them know about backup options, right? >> Frank Brody: We do advise the Space Station Control Center about a coming storm in parallel with advising the Center Operations Group and that way, if there's a need for the Space Station Control Center to relocate people to another NASA facility, they can get a start on that and so we will advise them on where the storm is, what the likely impact is, the timing, the risk to the center so that they can make informed decisions. >> Dan Huot: Okay. And I know we have some -- this is data from today, correct? That we have back here on our monitor. >> Frank Brody: Yes, that is correct. >> Dan Huot: And so, I mean we're, we're looking at the, the Caribbean right now. So are you guys doing, you know, monitoring for other NASA centers, besides JSC? >> Frank Brody: We're monitoring strictly for Johnson Space Center. We do provide advice to [inaudible] facility, occasionally we, we, we've given them some information. But on the screen here, you'll see that the tropics are actually relatively quiet and the middle of the screen is the remnants of Tropical Storm Debbie, which crossed Florida and is now moving into the Atlantic. And the little white blob in the, in the southern -- or the Central Atlantic is a very weak tropical wave that the hurricane center is monitoring and we're watching too, in case that should develop. But right now, it does not look like that will develop much, if at all. >> Dan Huot: And so you guys are currently in constant communication with the National Weather Service, being part of them as well and so you're also serving kind of as a, a feeder of information for the surrounding area, around the Johnson Space Center, correct? For the communities around us? >> Frank Brody: Well, the communities around Johnson Space Center sometimes rely on JSC to see what the center is doing and as it turns out, the -- in the Emergency Operations Center on the third floor of building 30 here, the third floor of Mission Control, there's an area where the local communities could relocate if necessary, to conduct their emergency operations. And in that case, we would be supporting not only JSC, but some of the local communities if they needed weather information. >> Dan Huot: So not only looking out for our spacecraft, but looking for -- out for all these people that help keep the International Space Station functioning and operating and also families and the surrounding communities. It's very fascinating stuff.