We’re hearing from one of NASA’s launch weather officers.
Mark Burger says the weather has been a “nuanced thing for us at times” but the current blue skies at the space centre are a good sign.
He says breezes will “continue to be an issue” but are a “minor” problem.
“Artemis is a very resilient vehicle,” he says, “so despite the breezes, it looks like that concern is a minimal one” – showing the below slides.
Cumulus clouds moving from the east side of Florida to the west – and then evolving into showers – is “one of the watch items” for tomorrow’s launch, Burger adds.
The risk of lightning, with any sort of showers, is “quite low”, and expectations for this would not come until the late afternoon.
“Any of that activity pushes towards Orlando after that. So again, it leaves us in a better spot here for our launch opportunity.”
Burger says the sun has become a “little bit more active – over the last day we’ve had a solar flare erupt, but no minimal impact”.
He adds: “Most of the energy is not Earth-facing.”
Burger says: “The weather is a changeable entity, and we do have a tendency to move towards somewhat less favourable through the rest of the week.
“It isn’t a huge drop off, but again, it’s of a little bit more of a situation where we’ll have to monitor those feisty cumulus clouds and potentially a few showers and breezes as well.”
“But again, at the current time I see no issues in terms of our launch capability for that.”