Riding out Harvey, Mission Control keeps watch over ISS

Florida Today

A view of Hurricane Harvey from the International Space Station, in an image tweeted Aug. 28 by NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik.

From 250 miles overhead, NASA astronauts marveled as powerful Hurricane Harvey bore down on the Texas coast, then unleashed a deluge on their hometown of Houston.

“Houston, we have a hurricane,” International Space Station flight engineer Jack Fischer said Saturday on Twitter. “Our thoughts & prayers are with folks feeling Harvey’s wrath, as dawn breaks after a long night of rain.”

The rain didn’t stop. Parts of Houston had been hit with a record-setting nearly 50 inches by Tuesday, and NASA confirmed Johnson Space Center would not reopen to all employees before next Tuesday, Sept. 5.

Despite the crisis unfolding flooding outside, ISS flight directors and more than 100 other “essential” personnel have ridden out the storm inside JSC’s iconic Mission Control Center to maintain watch over the ISS.

The orbiting laboratory's six-person crew includes three NASA astronauts: Fischer, Peggy Whitson and Randy Bresnik.

“Putting exclamation marks on ‘tough and competent!!’, Flight Director Zeb Scoville said in a tweet, alluding to legendary Apollo flight director Gene Kranz’s famous mantra. “This team riding out #Harvey in MCC to keep Space Station safe.”

On April 24, 2017, NASA Flight Director Brian Smith, Capcom astronaut Jessica Meir along with astronaut Jeff Williams monitored International Space Station operations from Johnson Space Center's Mission Control Center.

Harvey: Houston airports remain closed, cancellations top 6,400

Another flight director described the scene as surreal, with off-duty teams sleeping in a backup flight control room. Pictures showed cots lined up in front of a Flight Dynamics Officer’s console.

Thanks in part to the team’s sacrifice, Harvey has caused no disruption to space station operations.

In one precautionary measure, downlinks of science research video has been rerouted to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, which can serve as a backup Mission Control Center in an emergency.

So far NASA has opted to keep JSC in charge.

It remains to be seen how long the center stays closed for most employees, some of whom may be dealing with flooded homes or power outages.

Harvey: Houston airports remain closed, cancellations top 6,400

The storm presented a rude welcome to NASA’s newest class of 12 astronaut candidates, who had just reported for two years of training. Survival training had been on tap this week.

“Ironically had to cancel survival training for #NewAstronauts this week,” JSC Director Ellen Ochoa said on Twitter. “They'll get partial credit, onsite folks full credit and big thanks.”

ISS astronauts Fischer and Whitson, meanwhile, are due to return to Earth Saturday evening with a landing of their Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan. NASA astronauts typically are flown home to Houston soon after landing.

The space station and astronaut corps weren’t the only precious resources threatened by Harvey.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope crossing the threshold into Chamber A at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on June 21, 2017, for tests simulating the environment of space.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope scheduled to launch a nearly $9 billion mission in about a year, is undergoing tests there.

NASA said the telescope was dry and secure in a thermal vacuum chamber mimicking the extreme cold of space.

The temperature inside the chamber was a chilly minus 424 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to 73 degrees outside, according to the mission’s website.

"Our personnel and hardware are safe and everyone is taking appropriate precautions," the program said.

The storm did cut short a planned 45-day simulated space exploration mission inside JSC’s three-story habitat called HERA, for Human Exploration Research Analog.

The four-person HERA 14 mission began Aug. 5 and had been scheduled to end Sept. 18. Among the mission’s focus areas was the effects of sleep deprivation and how to mitigate them.

Space Center Houston, JSC’s visitor center, will stay closed at least through Friday.

Through the hardship, JSC’s flight operations team has kept up its spirits, even whipping up a “Hurricane Harvey Ops Team” patch to commemorate the historic storm.

International Space Station flight controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center created a patch to commemorate their work riding out Hurricane Harvey in the Mission Control Center.

A play on the Flight Operations Directorate’s logo, the patch shows a hurricane spinning behind a launching spacecraft.

The patch bears the Latin motto “Ad astra per aqua”: To the stars through the water.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 orjdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at@flatoday_jdeanand on Facebook atfacebook.com/jamesdeanspace.