The Spaceflight Meteorology Group (SMG) is a U.S. weather forecasting unit staffed by the National Weather Service (NWS) for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) which provides pertinent information on the current and expected state of the atmosphere during human spaceflight operations. It is located at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Meteorological information for the broader space program is provided by the 45th Space Wing's 45th Weather Squadron of the U.S. Air Force.
SMG covered Space Shuttle missions and was planned to cover Orion missions. Following the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis during STS-135 on July 21, 2011, many of the SMG forecasters were relocated elsewhere in the National Weather Service, leaving a reduced staff at JSC. The Spaceflight Meteorology Group is also tasked with forecasting emergency landings for Soyuz missions when those rendezvous with the International Space Station.
Read more about Spaceflight Meteorology Group: See Also
Famous quotes containing the word group:
“Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbours household, and, underneath, anothersecret and passionate and intensewhich is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.”
—Willa Cather (18731947)