[amsat-bb] NASA closes Johnson Space Center

[Rob Rousseau]

Clint,
   Thanks for the heads up.  That is pretty cool they can do all that 
from laptops from a hotel room no less.  The (large-ish) company I work 
for has about 42% of their employees working working from home. 
   I found a news article about NASA here:
-Rob, KI4BKE

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5996566.html


      By MARK CARREAU Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle


        Sept. 11, 2008, 6:55PM


NASA closed the Johnson Space Center, including Mission Control, at 
midday as Hurricane Ike neared the Texas coast. The agency activated a 
temporary control center near Austin to watch over the international 
space station until the storm threat passes.

As part of the storm precautions, NASA postponed the docking of a 
Russian Progress cargo capsule with the station, which had been 
scheduled for Friday, just after 4 p.m. CDT.

The station's three-man crew includes American Greg Chamitoff, the 
science officer and two Russians, commander Sergei Volkov and flight 
engineer Oleg Kononenko.

"We will assess any damage, and decide when it's safe to come back," 
said NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries as Johnson prepared to release its 
16,500 workers, many of them residents of the communities around 
Galveston Bay.

The temporary control center, set up in a hotel outside Austin, is 
equipped to communicate with the space station's crew around the clock 
through NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The space agency dispatched more flight controllers to Marshall, home to 
the station's payload operations center, which supervises scientific 
research aboard the orbital outpost. In an adjoining control center 
established as an emergency backup to Houston's Mission Control, NASA 
was prepared to take over long-term support of the station if the 
Johnson Space Center sustained severe damage from Ike.

The Progress cargo capsule was launched from Kazakhstan on Wednesday 
with fuel, food, water, spare parts and other supplies for the 220-mile 
high orbital outpost.