The Lightning Hunters

Titusville, Florida—the ideal spot for launching spacecraft in the United States just happens to lie right in the middle of a region known as Lightning Alley. Even when the air over Florida’s Cape Canaveral—home to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC)—is free of storms, electrical conditions can cancel a liftoff. Flight controllers dare not send a rocket into a charged blue sky, where the craft might act as a giant, flying lightning rod. And before liftoff, an ill-timed bolt could easily scuttle a mission. “If lightning strikes near a vehicle being readied on the launchpad, we might have to retest every system to see if induced currents have caused damage,” says Frank Merceret, research director of the space center’s weather office. “We might even have to roll the space shuttle back into the Vehicle Assembly Building.”