NASA is battling a very formidable foe in Florida

NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida could be climate change's next victim.

On All Things Considered, Nancy Bray, director of center operations at Kennedy Space Center, told NPR's Amy Green that sea level rising could affect the center's launch infrastructure.

The center's launch pads were previously located near a protective dune, but the dune has since collapsed, NPR reports. NASA has since built a new mile-long dune, but another natural dune recently collapsed, too.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"It didn't used to be that close," Bray told NPR. "The ocean was further out. And that primary dune that we had protected us for years."

Peter Adams, an assistant geology professor at the University of Florida who has studied beach erosion at the Kennedy Space Center, told NPR that "things are going to be fairly obviously threatened within the next 50 years or the next century." He added that rising sea levels are already a problem, since the center has devoted time and resources to creating a new dune.

Adams explained that in addition to sea level rising, wave patterns are changing, and coastal storms are becoming more dangerous. And while NASA hopes it won't come to it, the organization has also marked inland locations where a new launch pad could be built.