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Hurricane Dean threatens to disrupt NASA's plans |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Friday, 17 August 2007
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 With the the massive storm that is Hurricane Dean forcing its way through the Caribbean Sea, NASA managers are considering cutting the Space Shuttle Endeavour's mission one day short for a landing on Tuesday. The shuttle is currently scheduled to return on Wednesday after a two-week construction mission to the International Space Station, but the approach of Dean is concerning NASA flight controllers in Houston, Texas - not far from the projected path of the hurricane.
"We'd really like to protect an option to end the mission on Tuesday," LeRoy Cain, NASA mission management chair LeRoy Cain, said late on Friday. Though Endeavour is scheduled to land at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Friday at 12:52 PM EDT, NASA has two landing windows reserved for Tuesday, at 12:30 PM and 1:00 PM at KSC. To make the Tuesday landing on time, the crew of STS-118 would have to depart the ISS earlier than planned - by late Sunday. To do that, a spacewalk planned for Saturday would have to also be cut short in order to complete departure operations in time.
Shuttle commander Scott Kelly told reporters today of the possible early return during an in-orbit news conference. "It's not ideal," he said.
Though Hurricane Dean is currently on course for Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, it still poses a possible hazard to the Gulf of Mexico coast of Texas. NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, where the Mission Control Center that has coordinated all NASA spaceflights since the Gemini 4 launch in 1965. If the Mission Control Center is forced to close, NASA would send about two dozen essential flight controllers to a backup Mission Control Center at KSC, well out of the range of Hurricane Dean.
The International Space Station's control center is also located at JSC. When Hurricane Rita struck in September 2005 and forced the evacuation of Houston and ISS Mission Control temporarily transfered primary control of the station to the Russian Federal Space Agency in Moscow.
Space station flight controllers, too, are reviewing their procedures should the hurricane force an evacuation of Houston and Mission Control. In September 2005, the NASA closed its ISS Mission Control during Hurricane Rita, transferring primary control of the station to its Russian Federal Space Agency mission operations center near Moscow, with a backup team of U.S. flight controllers primed outside Houston.
Even so, NASA is hoping that none of the contingency plans will have to be implemented, since the Mission Control centers in Houston are the best equipped facilities to oversee the operation of Earth-orbiting spacecraft. "Our objective is really to get the mission completed, first and foremost, from here in Houston," said Matt Abbott, NASA's lead shuttle flight director.
In preparation for a possible Tuesday landing, mission managers are also preparing two additional landing sites for Endeavour in the event that the planned landing site at KSC is unavailable due to weather. Support teams are expected to ready NASA's backup shuttle landing sites at California's Edwards Air Force Base and the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico for the possibility of a Tuesday return for Endeavour.
"It's really important that we keep our options open as long as it's practical," Abbott said. "We've been watching this storm kind of brewing for a couple of days and everyone has been aware that it's developing ... we need to be prepared to respond."
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"I'm a doctor, not a moon shuttle conductor."
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