Students Supporting America’s Space Launch Program: Year 10 of the Orange County Public Schools and the 45th Weather Squadron Collaborative Research Program

Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) in Florida and the 45th Weather Squadron (45 WS) are in the 10^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 45th Weather Squadron while giving OCPS 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. Previously this program was only available at one high school in the county, Lake Nona HS, but as of this year has been expanded to include the new Innovation High School.

This year, students are working on five 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. 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 project completed its final year, in which students analyzed weather-related death rates in Florida. The culmination of this project was the student developed, directed, and produced weather safety video using this information to be used to educate the students of OCPS, the fourth largest school district in the state of Florida and ninth largest in the country. 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 if immediate in-situ soundings are not available, determining the probability of the change in different altitudes will provide important climatology. The fifth and final project was the development of a climatological database of the Spaceport weather towers. The weather tower network across the Spaceport consists of forty-six (46) towers, most with multiple levels of sensors recording temperature, dewpoint, and wind speed and direction at multiple levels ranging from 2 meters up to 150 meters. When complete, this database will simplify development of climatological based products for customers across the Eastern Range.