Students Supporting America’s Space Launch Program: Year 9 of the Lake Nona High School and the 45th Weather Squadron Collaborative Research Program

Lake Nona High School (LNHS) and the 45^th Weather Squadron (45 WS) are in the 9^th year of a highly successful collaborative research program that helps support America's space launch program. The 45 WS is the U.S. Space Force unit that provides comprehensive weather services to partners and customers at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Patrick Space Force Base, and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The goal of this collaboration has been to provide valuable research for the 45 WS while giving LNHS Advanced Placement® Statistics and Calculus students the opportunity to see real world application of mathematical topics learned in their classes. Students also learn valuable lessons in leadership, organization, teamwork, project management, scheduling, and communication.

This year, students are working on four separate research projects that were selected based on the operational needs of the 45 WS. The first, and longest tenured project involves quality-control and analysis of Lightning Launch Commit Criteria (LLCC) historical violation data. The LLCC are the complex set of weather rules that are designed to avoid natural and rocket-triggered lightning strikes to inflight space launch vehicles. The 45 WS and the Lightning Advisory Panel, a group of world-class lightning experts, continue to use the results of this research to improve the LLCC and safely expand launch opportunities. The second ongoing project allows students to analyze weather-related death rates in Florida and investigate the causes of tropical cyclone related fatalities across the contiguous United States. Shared with local National Weather Service Forecast Offices and Emergency Management officials, these statistics will help inform weather safety education and hurricane preparedness. The third and fourth projects involve statistical analysis of soundings taken at Cape Canaveral (KXMR). The first focus is designed to provide additional climatology and forecast tools to the duty forecasters who provide 24/7 weather watches, warnings, and advisories for the area of responsibility. The second focus involves analysis of variations in the height of temperatures between soundings. These values are used in the evaluation of the LLCC, and determining the probability of change in heights will provide important climatology if immediate in-situ soundings are not available.