92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Modernizing the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Weather Decision Support System: Readying NASA to Support the International Space Station Re-Supply Mission
Richard Stedronsky, MeteoStar, a Division of Sutron Corporation, Englewood, CO

Poster PDF (16.1 MB)

In February of 2008, NASA awarded Orbital Sciences Corporation the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program as a replacement to the Space Shuttle missions to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). Orbital chose to execute the COTS program using the new Taurus II rocket, to be launched from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) in Virginia. In order to prepare the the MARS at WFF for the ISS resupply missions, scheduled to begin in late 2011, many modernization tasks are underway on the WFF range. Numerous upgrades to the WFF launch weather decision support systems are also required to support the massive new Taurus II vehicle and its various weather constraints. IPS MeteoStar (IPSM), who has been providing meteorological solutions to the WFF for over 7 years, was awarded two contracts to assist NASA and Orbital in implementing these crucial weather decision support system upgrades. Implemented in two phases, IPSM and it's partners are delivering modernized, state-of-the-art meteorological sensors, data sets, and software solutions to ensure the MARS at WFF is ready to support the critical ISS resupply missions now and in the near future.

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