The Mapping of Aerospace Meteorology in the Brazilian Space Program: Challenges and Opportunities for Rocket Launch

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The meteorological and oceanographic conditions are crucial for the successful launch of aerospace vehicles. However, the decision-making process using environmental information is a complex problem, since it depends on a constant review of current and future weather conditions. To understand this process in the Brazilian Space Program (BSP) context, this paper aims to be the first attempt to map out the systemic view of applied meteorology for the launch missions of aerospace vehicles. Various Brazilian stakeholders were interviewed and their perspectives were analyzed by using a problem structuring method known as Strategic Options Development and Analysis (SODA). With this approach, it was possible to identify different concepts in each group of respondents regarding the current situation of Aerospace Meteorology. One particularly relevant result was identified: weather forecast is not merely a tool to be used to modify the chronology of a mission and to fully provide support in decision-making during the rocket launches in Brazil. Furthermore, the paper shows that the Aerospace Meteorology needs to improve technical processes and to develop a weather decision support system with decisionmakers' preferences regarding the uncertainty in weather forecasts. SODA has shown to be a support tool to understand the real situation of meteorology for the launch of aerospace vehicles and appropriate to aid in future planning in the BSP.

Modelling weather risk preferences with multi‐criteria decision analysis for an aerospace vehicle launch

“…A complete description of step 1 can be found in Caruzzo et al . (). After that, the proposed methodology was developed in three additional steps, the details of which are the subject of this paper: step 2: identification of the weather‐related risk preference, construction of attribute value functions and definition of a partial (wdi, for each variable) and global (WDI, multi‐criteria approach) weather decision index to transform meteorological information into an index; step 3: construction of several weather scenarios according to hazard impact levels and identification of the set of actions and/or mitigation plan for each scenario from the stakeholders; action/mitigation evaluation and sensitivity analysis of alternatives, and step 4: recommendations of actions/plans during the weather forecast lead‐time as a numerical scale and according to the decision maker's profile. …”

“…postpone the launch) according to his/her personal experience and weather risk perception. This meteorological bulletin has a description of atmospheric conditions and the deterministic weather forecast (deprived of uncertainty estimates) for the next hours/days (Marques and Fisch, ; Caruzzo et al ., ).…”

“…Furthermore, because a sounding rocket experiment and the value of the payload can cost several million dollars (Cho et al ., ), the support system should be customized together with the stakeholders and be developed to the specific decision context (Roy, ; Joe et al ., ; Joslyn and Savelli, ; Montz et al ., ; White et al ., ). In other words, the model has to address the preferences of the decision maker concerning the weather risk inherent to the launching mission (Caruzzo et al ., ). To understand the weather‐related decision problem in the BSP, the launch of a sounding rocket for microgravity experiments (and payload recovery in the Atlantic Ocean) was analysed for the complete mission (Figure ): pre‐launch − launch integration procedure (before step 1); launch − rocket sounding lift‐off (step 1), and post‐launch − flight in the atmosphere (steps 2–5) and retrieval of the payload (steps 6 and 7). …”

“…Caruzzo et al . () demonstrated that, for this group of respondents, the application of the weather forecast as a reliable tool to make a decision during the sounding rocket launch depends on the capturing and incorporating of the decision maker's preferences for the following three attributes: forecast probability ( p ) associated with the variables; lead‐time ( t ) of the weather forecast, and value of several specific meteorological and oceanographic variables ( x ). …”

“…Moreover, according to Caruzzo et al . (), usually the BSP's Chief‐of‐Mission does not have time to structure this process, and a lot of information is therefore ignored. So, an aid system which integrates the information into a simpler frame makes it easier for the Chief‐of‐Mission to identify the best action from the set of alternatives.…”