Page 60 - Occupational Health & Safety, September 2019

FALL PROTECTION
Kennedy Space Center: Innovative Non-Conductive Fall Protection
Electronically non-conductive ladder fall protection system makes working on lightning towers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center safer and more efficient.
BY MIKAELA MCSHANE AND JESSE PETERS
Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center underwent renovations and up- grades to accommodate NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion crew capsule. The
newly updated pad will support Artemis 1, formerly Exploration Mission-1, the first in a series of increas- ingly complex missions that will enable human explo- ration of the Moon and Mars, and other efforts for the Artemis Program.
However, to successfully send the first woman and next man to the Moon, Pad 39B must mitigate a natural threat—lightning. The height of the launch vehicles and the location of the pad on the coast of Central Florida’s Cape Canaveral means there is high risk of lightning strikes which could result in serious damage to the launch vehicle and the pad.
According to the Lightning Advisory Panel for America’s Space Program, “Lightning—both natural and artificially-initiated or ‘triggered’ discharges—is
still the primary weather hazard to spaceflight opera- tions.” Concurrently, Florida has been identified by the National Lightning Detection Network as the state with the greatest concentration of cloud-to-ground lightning flashes per square kilometer, making light- ning strike prevention a doubly serious concern at the launch pads at Kennedy on Florida’s Space Coast.
After leaving the Vehicle Assembly Building, the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft and the mobile launcher will travel atop a crawler-transporter, one of the massive tracked vehicles capable of transporting 18 million pounds, to Pad 39B. Once there, the launch vehicle can sit on the launch pad for serval weeks, leaving it open to lightning strikes and ensuing dam- age. The lightning protection towers surrounding the launch vehicle are critical to the continued safety of the launch vehicle and timeliness of launches. Tech- nicians at Kennedy are continually monitoring the launch vehicle for signs of potential damage from in-
56 Occupational Health & Safety | SEPTEMBER 2019
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NASA / KENNEDY SPACE CENTER