NASA Mission Defend a watch on braces for Storm Laura as astronauts gaze from space

Mission controllers at NASA’s Johnson Residence Heart in Houston are bracing for the affect of Storm Laura.

Now a Class 4 storm, Laura made landfall early this morning (Aug. 27) on the Texas-Louisiana border, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) east of the heart, where the agency conducts its World Residence Region operations. 

To region up for the maybe catastrophic storm, NASA has temporarily closed Johnson Residence Heart, sending a slight crew of mission-severe personnel who’re  “germane to monitoring and sending instructions for a truly out of the ordinary get dangle of 22 situation systems” to a backup protect watch over hub in central Texas, according to NASA’s ISS blog. 

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And accurate in case the heart turns into inaccessible after the storm, the fleshy crew of flight controllers has been developing a backup protect watch over room on the agency’s Marshall Residence Flight Heart in Huntsville, Alabama.

“As in the past, a backup flight protect watch over crew is located in Central Texas coping with all USOS [United States Operational Segment] operations with a longer-length of time crew located on the Marshall Residence Flight Heart must aloof that vary into fundamental,” NASA spokesman Engage Navias told Residence.com in an electronic mail. “ISS operations are running with out problems without a impacts or any threat to the crew.”

There are at point out three crewmembers on board the World Residence Region:  NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner. On Wednesday (Aug. 26) Cassidy tweeted pictures of Storm Laura taken from the orbiting lab. “Defend safe everyone,” he wrote in the tweet.

Johnson Residence Heart shouldn’t be any stranger to typhoon threats. When Storm Harvey hit the Houston condo in August 2017, the heart became once closed for nearly two weeks due to severe flooding. 

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The National Storm Heart (NHC) warned that Laura could per chance region off “catastrophic” storm surges and flash flooding alongside the northwest Gulf Wing on Wednesday evening (Aug. 26). Nevertheless, by Thursday morning the storm surge warning had been lifted in the Houston condo, the NHC said in its newest advisory.

Electronic mail Hanneke Weitering at [email protected] or observe her @hannekescience. Discover us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.