TAG | Astronauts at Space Station don't like Hurricane Ike |
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| by William Atkins | |
| Sunday, 14 September 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 2 Because of Hurricane Ike hitting the Texas Coast, the Russian supply ship is parked in orbit waiting further instructions from NASA, and the three-member ISS crew will have to wait for food, fuel, and supplies. The Russian supply spacecraft Progress M-65 (mission designation to Space Station: ISS-30P) was launched by a Soyuz-U rocket on Wednesday, September 10, 2008, at 23:50 Moscow time (19:50 UTC) from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. It was scheduled to dock at the International Space Station three days later (on September 13), but the docking has been re-scheduled for no earlier than September 17 because of the devastating effects of Hurricane Ike on NASA and NASA-contractor personnel at the Johnson Space Center, and the facility itself. Specifically, the major storm, now hitting the Texas Coast, has shut down the NASA facility, the Johnson Space Center (JSC), which supports unmanned and manned missions back and forth from the Space Station through its Mission Control Center (MCC). JSC is located just south of Houston, Texas, in Clear Lake City, and next to Clear Lake, which is part of Galveston Bay, along the Gulf of Mexico. Mission controllers in Houston have relocated their operations to Austin, Texas (at the center of the state), after the Johnson Space Center was closed at noon (local time) on Thursday, September 11 as the hurricane approached the NASA space center. According to a NASA media brief “Hurricane Ike impact felt in space,”Initially, control of the Progress flight was handed over to flight controllers at backup facilities near Austin, Texas, and Huntsville, Alabama." Russia and the United States are working together to successfully dock this cargo ship to the International Space Station Please read on. |
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