NASA mission
controllers are once again in control of the International Space Station (ISS)
as the manned spaceflight facility resumes normal operations after Hurricane
Rita.
Russian and NASA ISS
flight controllers returned primary mission operations to mission controllers
at Johnston Space Center in Houston, Texas at 10:00 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) Monday,
NASA spokesperson Kylie Clem told SPACE.com.
"People are
coming in today and starting to restart equipment," she said of other JSC
personnel.
JSC, NASA's
manned spaceflight hub for its ISS and space shuttle operations, shut down last
week as Hurricane Rita approached the Texas Gulf Coast. Primary space station
control was transferred to NASA's Houston support group and Russian ISS flight controllers in Korolev, outside
Moscow, for the first time since October 2002.
The
hurricane weakened to a Category 3 storm before making landfall on the
southwestern coast of Louisiana. The storm's arrival was a near miss for NASA -
earlier projections predicted Rita's landfall at nearby Galveston, Texas - and
caused only minor
damage to the spaceflight center.
"It seems
to have dodged a big one and come through pretty unscathed," NASA spokesperson
Dean Acosta said of JSC, adding that space agency chief Michael Griffin was
apprised of the damage at the site Monday.
NASA
officials said it is still too early to estimate the cost of Rita's damage at
JSC, the space agency's third center to suffer hurricane-related damage this
month.
NASA's New
Orleans-based Michoud Assembly Facility, where engineers build space shuttle
external tanks, and Stennis Space Center in Mississippi also braced against
Rita's arrival. The storm marked the second hurricane to batter the facilities
after Hurricane Katrina damaged both
sites three weeks ago.
Michoud reopened
Monday for limited work, while inspectors reported no damage at the Stennis
facility, home to NASA's shuttle engine tests, NASA officials said.
Meanwhile,
up in space, the two astronauts aboard the ISS entered the last visitor-free
week of their mission.
ISS Expedition
11 commander Sergei Krikalev and flight engineer John Phillips have lived
and worked aboard the space station in mid-April 2006, and are nearing the end
of their six-month mission. Their relief crew, Expedition
12 commander Bill McArthur and flight engineer Valery Tokarev, are set to
launch toward the station with space
tourist Gregory Olsen on Sept. 30 at 11:54 p.m. EDT (0354 Oct. 1 GMT).
Krikalev
and Phillips will return to Earth with Olsen on Oct. 10, and are slated to land
on the steppes of Kazakhstan at 9:12 p.m. EDT (0112 Oct. 11 GMT).
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