NASA activated a back-up Mission Control Center in the middle of Texas today as the agency closed Johnson Space Center in advance of Hurricane Ike.The closure prompted NASA to delay until next week a shuttle program-level flight readiness review for the planned Oct. 10 launch of Atlantis and seven astronauts on a fifth and final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission.
NASA also is moving to delay the scheduled docking Friday of a robotic Russian supply ship at the International Space Station.
The back-up Mission Control Center near Austin has limited capability, and flight controllers would be unable to feather massive American solar wings in advance of the Progress docking.
The solar wings -- which stretch 240 feet from tip to tip -- typically are rotated to a position at which they are edge-on to an approaching Progress space freighter. The rotation, or feathering, is done so the arrays are not damaged by the exhaust from spacecraft thrusters powered by toxic rocket fuel.
Launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, the Progress spacecraft was scheduled to dock at the station at 5:01 p.m. EDT Friday. Loaded up with 2.7 tons of food, fuel and other supplies, the spacecraft will loiter in orbit near the station until NASA's Mission Control Center at JSC can be reactived.
Unclear until after the storm passes will be what if any impact Ike will have on launch preparations and the Oct. 10 target launch date for Atlantis.
Hundreds of people in the Houston area and along the southeast Texas coast were ordered to evacuate today as Ike approached with hurricane-strength winds.
The front end of the storm is expected to made landfall west of Houston early Saturday as a powerful Category 3 hurricane. The dangerous northeast quadrant of the storm in that case would bring extremely high winds and heavy rain to the Houston area.
IMAGE NOTE: Click to enlarge and save the projected Hurricane Ike storm path that was released today by the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
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