Kennedy Space Center, due to the need to protect Space Shuttles and other launch vehicles, has performed extensive research into lightning, its causes, and how to detect and forecast it. This information has been applied toward improved lightning warning and protection systems. For more than twenty years, KSC has hosted international projects to study thunderstorms and atmospheric electricity. The three largest programs have been the Thunderstorm Research International Project (TRIP) conducted in the mid-1970s, the Rocket Triggered Lightning Program (RTLP) conducted from the mid-1980's until 1992 and the Convection and Precipitation/Electrification (CaPE) program of 1991.

Additionally, three programs using aircraft having electric field measurement capability have been conducted at KSC. The first occurred during the Apollo-Soyuz program to safely enhance launch availability for short-launch-window docking missions. The second was the Airborne Field Mill (ABFM) program to study revising our lightning launch commit criteria to safely relax them based on better understanding of the actual hazards. Finally, NASA's Langley Research Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, KSC, Stanford Research International, Aeromet Incorporated and New Mexico Technological University conducted airborne experiments as part of the RTLP.

Many investigators from other governmental agencies, leading universities, utilities and international organizations have conducted ground-based and airborne lightning experiments as a part of the KSC program. The French government was a major participant in the RTLP since it pioneered this type of research along with the United States.

Several other NASA Centers are heavily involved in lightning-related research. NASA Langley scientists have studied aircraft-triggered lightning by flying specially instrumented and weather-hardened aircraft directly through thunderstorms in Virginia and Oklahoma. Much of what we know about this phenomenon was discovered through work with an F-106B fighter airplane. During eight years of research, the airplane was struck by lightning more than 700 times. Nearly all of these strikes were triggered by the aircraft's motion through the intense thunderstorm-electric field rather than as the result of intercepting a natural lightning bolt. The FAA and the Air Force have conducted similar experiments to determine how to better protect aircraft electronics.

Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in conjunction with Langley and KSC has measured electric fields aloft using airborne field mills to assess what conditions pose a threat of triggered lightning during space vehicle launches. Scientists from the University of Arizona, New Mexico Tech and other universities are examining KSC/CCAS ground-based field mill data for additional clues concerning what conditions are safe and which are hazardous in order to design launch rules which will provide maximum opportunity to launch without compromising safety.

MSFC has investigated thunderstorms by over-flying them with U-2 aircraft, and is also investigating lightning by satellite. Its Optical Transient Detector (OTD) is able to detect and locate lightning from orbit over large regions of the globe. A highly compact combination of optical and electronic elements, it represents a major advance over previous technology in that it gathers lightning data in day time as well as night. OTD and its follow-on, the Lightning Mapper, will enable more accurate estimates of the energy and current associated with the global electrical circuit.