Broadening Traditional Aviation Meteorology Education to Support Spaceflight Operations

The purpose of this paper is to examine the expansion of traditional aviation meteorology education necessary to support the growing commercial space-operations industry. While spaceflight meteorological considerations do overlap with those of traditional aviation operations, there are notable differences schools must address for appropriate education and training of both meteorologists and operators. These include knowledge of increased weather sensitivities, space-weather impacts, triggered lightning, triboelectrification, and high-resolution vertical wind-profile analyses. An added challenge in the educational process is the more limited amount of publicly available weather and space-weather products necessary to support spaceflight education. Furthermore, in comparison with traditional aviation meteorology, real-world experiential learning opportunities for students to support actual space-launch and on-orbit operations are limited. However, flight simulations employing historical meteorological and space-weather data may help provide the basic educational tools necessary to overcome these limitations and better prepare students pursuing careers in spaceflight, either as operators or as meteorologists.