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In 2017, as Hurricane Irma churned in Atlantic waters with its sights set on Florida, an Air Force spaceplane tasked with a top secret mission sat on the pad at Kennedy Space Center, waiting for its ride to space.

Some 600 miles to the southeast on Sept. 7, the 400-mile-wide Irma was a Category 5 storm packing maximum sustained winds of 175 mph a catastrophic scenario for anyone in its path, including the Boeing-built X-37B. In 72 hours, the outer bands of Irma would start spinning uncomfortably close to the Space Coast.

The Air Force had a critical decision to make: thread the needle and launch the robotic spacecraft before Irma hit, or wait for the storm to pass? Its ride to orbit, SpaceXs Falcon 9, could be ready in time. So could company and Air Force support personnel.

Turns out the safest place for the 29-foot-long spacecraft was anywhere other than Cape Canaveral.

It was far safer up on orbit than it was anywhere else we could put it on the Cape, Air Force Brig. Gen. Wayne Monteith said in 2018, then commander of the 45th Space Wing, which oversees two bases responsible for the United States busiest spaceport. We launched that rocket and I immediately drove from there back to Patrick Air Force Base and signed a total evacuation order for the wing.

Luckily for the Space Coast, Irma ended up shifting west, but it still followed the spine of the Sunshine State. The price tag for statewide damages: about $50 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The storm and ones since highlight the precarious position the Eastern Range can find itself in during hurricane season, which ended Nov. 30 and begins on the first day of June. Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Kennedy Space Center are Americas national security, science, and commercial space focal points. There are no comparable backups.

Since the Capes founding as a spaceport in 1950, dozens of storms have threatened operations. But despite technological advances since the dawn of the Space Age, an analysis of 170 years of storms shows there is no single, reliable pattern at work. And there are still countless mysterious surrounding the colossal entities of low pressure, potentially affecting forecasting and preparedness.

But these uncertainties have reaffirmed the importance of one defense tool: vigilance.

A new chapter in spaceflight began in July 1950 with the launch of the first rocket from Cape Canaveral: Bumper 8.(Photo: NASA/U.S. Army)

Before towering, propellant-packed rockets dotted the horizon, Cape Canaveral not the city to the south, but the land to the north was home to sprawling wetlands, sleepy fishing houses, and the occasional cemetery. Ancient cultures walked along these beaches as far back as 5,000 B.C.

But when officials in charge of Americas efforts to gain a foothold in space realized launches over land could fail and come crashing down over populated areas, a new challenge was added.

In many ways, Cape Canaverals selection as the future spaceport was written in the stars. It was situated with views of the Atlantic to the east, meaning rockets could launch away from people and over water. Its proximity to the equator meant rockets would also benefit from an extra push thanks to Earths rotation, a critical advantage that helps expend less fuel after liftoff. The Capes protrusion also meant launches could target slightly northern or southern trajectories without interfering with land.

And it helped, of course, that few people lived there.

Cape Canaverals role as a spaceport began in July 1950 with the launch of a repurposed German V-2 rocket. Prior to the kickoff of this Space Age, hurricane data exists going back as far as 1850, but lacks critical information obtained by satellites that would become more advanced in the 1960s and beyond.

We measure these things so well now, said Philip Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State Universitys Department of Atmospheric Science. We were flying one plane a day and it was very rudimentarily operated. Now we have all this amazing satellite data and were flying multiple planes almost constantly as these things are approaching land.

An analysis of the data shows that since that first launch in 1950 and through 2019, 45 systems ranging from tropical storms on the low end to Category 4 hurricanes on the high end have come within 100 statute miles of the Cape. Of those, 31 were tropical storms and 14 were Category 1 and above. Any of those intensities, however, would be enough to delay a launch or reorganize operations around its effects.

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale rates storms by wind speed, starting with Category 1 at 74 mph all the way up to Category 5, which begins at 157 mph. Systems under 74 mph but above 39 mph are classified as tropical storms and were used in this analysis due to their ability to affect spaceflight operations.

But attempting to find trends in that data even when looking back as far as 1850 doesnt offer the Eastern Range much in the way of predicting the future.

Theres no long-term trend in the number of land-falling hurricanes or major hurricanes, Klotzbach said. But with that being said, the Space Coast in the past few years has had some very close calls.

Aside from Irma in 2017 and its impacts on X-37B, hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Dorian in 2019 seriously threatened the Cape. Just a few dozen miles are all that separated the Space Coast from the Category 4 and Category 2 storms, respectively.

Long-term trends aside, Klotzbach points to several issues when it comes to hurricane data:

Thanks to satellites and general advances in technology, its difficult to compare todays storms to the past;

With sea level rise, even if the storm frequencies and intensities stay the same, surges from hurricanes will likely cause more water damage;

More people live on coastlines than ever before, meaning its hard to compare damages wrought by previous storms versus how much damage future ones will do;

A potentially warmer atmosphere fueled by climate change also means storms could hold more water, presenting yet another threat in the form of increasingly intense rainfalls;

And modern structures, including those at the Cape, can withstand incredibly high winds, but an increase in water presence is something that cant easily be overcome.

Klotzbach also draws attention to mysteries in his field that impact both in favor of and against hurricanes.

A short-term oscillation of storm patterns, for example, has been present in the Atlantic for hundreds of years. For 20 to 30 years, the Atlantic basin will produce powerful storms, then quietly subside for an equal amount of time due to unknown mechanisms. From the 1940s to the late 1960s, for example, Florida was hit by five Category 4 hurricanes in six years, followed by a comparatively quiet period until 1995. But the length of these cycles means the National Hurricane Center and other entities really only have reliable, high-tech data for two instances since 1950 and five to seven if looking back to 1850.

El Nio and La Nia, meanwhile, are names for the opposite ends of a cycle of temperature fluctuations between the ocean and atmosphere. While they occur in the Pacific, their impacts can carry over into the Atlantic basin,especially during hurricane season.

Thats one of the biggest questions we dont know the answer to, Klotzbach said. If we get more El Nio events, that could mean even if the waters get warmer due to climate change, a strong enough El Nio could kill the hurricane season regardless.

But studies have shown the oscillation could go either way in the future, he said.

Yet another issue impacting data and hurricanes is wind shear, a powerful force that can help tame and even direct hurricanes along their path. Strong enough wind shear can tear a hurricane apart; too weak, and it can continue relatively unabated.

Hurricanes respond to a lot of different factors, Klotzbach said. They respond to the water temperatures, which should go up (with climate change); they respond to temperatures throughout the atmosphere, which are also going to go up even more; and then the shearing winds may change, meaning if they become stronger that could counteract other factors.

Taken together, these issues and countless more show that regardless of how many satellite constellations orbit the Earth and how advanced technology becomes, mysteries will fight on. Datacenters full of supercomputers crunching wind shear, temperature, and other inputs can help with short-term predictions, but long-term patterns are difficult to forecast.

The data is important, but Earth is always changing.

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If its short-term forecasts that are the most reliable, then the answer is constant vigilance, or constantly being prepared and on guard.

To achieve that, new structures at the Cape and even some of the old have been built to withstand powerful hurricanes. The iconic Vehicle Assembly Building, where NASAs Apollo Saturn V and space shuttles were stacked, has withstood impacts from dozens of storms and survived with moderate damages at worst.

The same can be said for launch pads: Atlas, Delta and Vulcan rocket operator United Launch Alliance, for example, said all its facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station are hurricane-rated. Most structures are able to handle up to Category 3 winds, which begin at 111 mph.

And for launch weather officers and the overall 45th Weather Squadron, which provides weather support to the Air Force station and Kennedy Space Center, their work doesnt just happen on launch days.

We are in constant contact with all of our partners, where that is NASA, Boeing, SpaceX or ULA, said Will Ulrich, a launch weather officer with the Air Forces 45th Weather Squadron. If we see a threat developing in the Atlantic, even out there seven days before, we are receiving calls and trying to provide them information to make decisions.

When youre talking about rockets and the buildings that store those rockets, it takes a significant amount to time for them to secure and move everything, Ulrich said, noting that the forecasting is still required outside hurricane season.

That year-round necessity, he said, reaffirms the idea that launch operations arent all about launch day. As of this writing in December, a ULA Delta IV Heavy rocket is in its vertical integration facility at Launch Complex 37, a full seven months before its flight in June with a classified spacecraft. That means during the entire window of preparation whether or not the rocket is in the hangar, whether or not the spacecraft is stacked on top of the rocket can be months-long. And in the case of human rated vehicles, that timeline could be years.

This means the six months of hurricane season are critical to U.S. access to space, which has long been touted as a warfighting domain by the military, but so are the six months devoid of major storm activities. Whether its billion-dollar national security spacecraft or a batch of communications satellites slated for low-Earth orbit, the stakes are high for the worlds busiest spaceport.

The infrastructure and the robustness of that infrastructure are at the forefront of our minds every day, said Lt. Gen. John F. Thompson, commander of the Air Forces Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, California.

There are many other sites as well that we consider critical infrastructure to our nations space enterprise, he said, referencing Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It is also active for launches, but its position on the West Coast makes it less efficient and, in turn, far less active than Cape Canaveral. Its primary advantage comes from being able to launch rockets to the south on polar trajectories, a capability unmatched by Florida.

The Air Forces massive investments into forecasting and preparedness along with its government and commercial partners still come together in the off season. This December alone, up to five launches are slated to take flight from the range.

True to poetic form, X-37B stands out as one of the highlights of 2019. After skirting by Irma in 2017 and spending a record-breaking two years on orbit, the mini-shuttle returned to its Kennedy Space Center runway for a horizontal landing in October, completing its clandestine mission.

Considering the storm activity that Florida saw in the interim, Gen. Monteith had been right: the safest place for X-37B was indeed on orbit.

Contact Emre Kelly at aekelly@floridatoday.com or 321-242-3715. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @EmreKelly.

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Hurricane season is over, but threats to Space Coast rocket launches are still out there - Florida Today