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CX2SA > NASA 24.09.05 03:43l 73 Lines 3988 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 38101_CX2SA
Read: GUEST
Subj: Hurricane forces NASA to close
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Sent: 050924/0140Z @:CX2SA.LAV.URY.SA #:38101 [Minas] FBB7.00e $:38101_CX2SA
From: CX2SA@CX2SA.LAV.URY.SA
To : NASA@WW
Hurricane forces NASA to close Johnson Space Center
===================================================
NASA has closed the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, evacuating
its skeleton crew on Thursday just a day after the rest of the centre had been
shut down with the approach of Hurricane Rita.
The closure may affect some science experiments on the International Space
Station and could prolong the station's control from Russia. Meanwhile, damage
to the homes of NASA's space shuttle workers from Hurricane Katrina may push
back the next launch window from March to May 2006.
Johnson's 82-person skeleton crew was meant to ride out Hurricane Rita and
monitor damage to the centre via television cameras. Maintenance workers could
have made immediate repairs and would have kept power flowing to the centre.
But now the gates of the centre have been locked in anticipation of dangerous
flooding and winds from Rita, a Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 225
kilometres per hour. The latest forecast is that the eye of the hurricane will
make landfall somewhere near the border of Texas and Louisiana late on Friday,
local time. Johnson is close to Galveston Bay on the Gulf of Mexico near Rita's
expected landfall. Damage limitation
JSC employees spent this week taping up computers and windows, lifting
equipment off the floor, and backing up data. If roads are flooded, NASA will
airlift a security team into the Houston space centre after the storm passes to
make an initial damage assessment.
US control of the International Space Station has been temporarily shifted to
Moscow, where a small group of NASA flight controllers live. Some mission
managers have also been relocated to other NASA centres around the US in case
they are needed.
If JSC is seriously damaged, NASA would send more flight controllers to Moscow
to continue ISS operations in the short-term, says NASA spokesman Allard
Beutel. Previous storms have also affected NASA's spaceflight programme and in
October 2002, Houston's mission control was shut down before the arrival of
Hurricane Lili, delaying the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis.
If communication between Houston and the station is lost during the storm,
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, will not be able to
control some of the autonomous science experiments on the station. But
researchers say most of those experiments are not actively controlled and will
simply not be monitored during the closure. Homeless
NASA is still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. The Michoud
Assembly Facility in Louisiana, which manufactures the space shuttle's external
tanks, and the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, which tests shuttle
engines, sustained about $1 billion in damage during that storm. Many of the
workers at those centres lost their homes.
As a result, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has said that it may no longer be
possible to take advantage of the space shuttle Discovery's next launch
opportunity in March 2006 and that the agency is considering a launch in May
2006.
"March is not looking likely," says Beutel. Workers in Michoud are once again
evacuating because of Rita's approach.
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