NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston — as in, "Houston, we have a problem" — is surrounded by the floodwaters of Tropical Storm Harvey, but its own facilities, located on high ground and equipped with large generators, are so far unharmed. "I am [safe] but we are on an island apparently," tweeted flight director Royce Renfrew on Sunday, adding that he'd seen "video of high water rescues half a mile from here" and had "no way out" of the space center for the time being.
Many essential staff weathered the storm at the space center over the weekend, maintaining contact with the International Space Station. "All right, you guys have got photos of Harvey on SSC-21 if you like," an ISS astronaut radioed down Sunday, but the nearly empty Houston center didn't have the staff on hand to process the photos. "Copy, photos of Harvey on SSC-21," Houston replied. "We do not have an ops plan on this shift because of Harvey, ironically, so we will get them when we can."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
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.
-
The best new music of 2024 by genreThe Week Recommends Outstanding albums, from pop to electro and classical
-
Nine best TV shows of 2024 to binge this ChristmasThe Week Recommends From Baby Reindeer and Slow Horses to Rivals and Shogun, here are the critics' favourites
-
Crossword: December 28, 2024The Week's daily crossword puzzle
-
US won its war on 'murder hornets,' officials saySpeed Read The announcement comes five years after the hornets were first spotted in the US
-
Dark energy data suggest Einstein was rightSpeed Read Albert Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity has been proven correct, according to data collected by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
-
New DNA tests of Pompeii dead upend popular storiesSpeed Read An analysis of skeletal remains reveals that some Mount Vesuvius victims have been wrongly identified
-
NASA's Europa Clipper blasts off, seeking an oceanSpeed Read The ship is headed toward Jupiter on a yearslong journey
-
Detailed map of fly's brain holds clues to human mindSpeed Read This remarkable fruit fly brain analysis will aid in future human brain research
-
Blind people will listen to next week's total eclipseSpeed Read While they can't see the event, they can hear it with a device that translates the sky's brightness into music
-
Melting polar ice is messing with global timekeepingSpeed Read Ice loss caused by climate change is slowing the Earth's rotation
-
An amphibian that produces milk?speed read Caecilians, worm-like amphibians that live underground, produce a milk-like substance for their hatchlings
