Update on JSC
Published on Sep 13, 2008 at 6:10 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under NASA.
This will be a short posting today. Hurricane Ike has moved on past Houston. The storm surge is draining. There are plenty of news sources out there reporting on the conditions in the Houston/Galveston area after the hurricane, and I’ll let them tell the story. However, many of my readers would be interested in what happened to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Initial reports are that the space center survived the hurricane without crippling damage. Sure, there was damage. Reportedly, flood waters entered some buildings. Some buildings lost part of their roofs. Many buildings have leaks. Reportedly significant damage was done to one of NASA’s hangars at nearly Ellington Field; however, most NASA aircraft had been evacuated from the area beforehand. Reportedly, some reporters in the area found some light furniture (folding chairs, etc) floating down a street with the NASA logo on them.
JSC is definitely not ready to resume normal operations, and it won’t be for a while. Control for the International Space Station will continue to be from backup centers. A team of 65 NASA personnel rode out the storm at JSC, and they are still assessing damage to the space center. The space center is still closed today to other employees.
The Houston/Galveston is still a disaster area. The area around the space center is still under a curfew, and officials are not letting people back into the area. There is still no power or water in the area (naturally there are generators at JSC, but people in the area still have to have a place to live). It will take some time for things to return to normal. But, the good news is that initial reports are that the damage is manageable. However, it will take some time to determine if the damage is sufficient to impact future Space Shuttle missions.
-Astroprof
Jane on January 30, 2009 at 5:13 pm: 1
I’m glad to know that there wasn’t severe damage to the Johnson Space Center. The footage of Houston following Ike looked pretty bad!