NASA's
Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston reopened for business Monday after a
lengthy closure due to Hurricane Ike.
Home to
NASA's astronaut training facilities and Mission Control rooms for the space
shuttle and International Space Station, the Texas-based JSC shut down on Sept.
11 to allow personnel to evacuate in advance
of Hurricane Ike.
"Actually,
it went very smoothly," NASA spokesperson John Ira Petty told SPACE.com
from the center, adding that there's still cleanup work to be done. "We don't
have 100 percent so far."
NASA closed
down the space station control room and activated backup teams near Austin,
Texas, and Huntsville, Ala., to support the three-astronaut crew currently
aboard the orbiting laboratory. High winds caused roof damage at several JSC
buildings, including the station Mission Control, and damaged hangar facilities
at nearby Ellington Field, where NASA stories its T-38 astronaut training jets.
The aircraft were evacuated from the base prior to Ike's arrival.
Petty said
local schools around the center are still closed and leave is being granted to
JSC personnel who need to remain home to oversee repairs to their damaged
homes.
Flight
controllers reopened NASA's space station Mission Control on Friday, though the
facilities' evacuation did delay the arrival of an unmanned
Russian cargo ship by several days.
The autonomous
space freighter, Progress 30, spent a few extra days orbiting Earth until NASA
flight controllers at the backup control centers could position the station's
U.S.-built solar arrays in the proper position before docking.
NASA
mission managers have said their hurricane recovery efforts were not
expected to hinder plans to launch the space shuttle Atlantis and a crew of
seven astronauts toward the Hubble Space Telescope on Oct. 10.
That launch
target, however, may
be delayed a few days due to a series of minor technical glitches related
to moving a cargo container holding new instruments and spare parts for Hubble
to Atlantis atop its seaside launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape
Canaveral, Fla.
NASA
mission managers will study the schedule impact, if any, of the glitches and
set an official launch date for the Hubble flight during a two-day meeting to
begin Oct. 2.
Commanded
by veteran shuttle flyer Scott Altman, Atlantis' STS-125 mission will mark
NASA's fifth and final service call on the Hubble Space Telescope. Shuttle
astronauts plan to stage five back-to-back spacewalks to install new cameras,
replace batteries, gyroscopes and other equipment, add a docking ring, and make
tricky repairs designed to extend the telescope's orbital life through 2013.
advertisement
