NASA's Mission Control Faces Communication, Staffing Issues Due To Harvey

Hurricane Harvey has been unloading feet of rain on Texas and now Louisiana since it made landfall over the weekend. The storm and following flooding has caused power and cell phone service outages as well as destruction and death. The storm has ravaged the coast as well as the Houston area where NASA has its Johnson Space Center.

Johnson Space Center is the main communication point for the International Space Station flying 250 miles above Earth. As the station flew over Harvey astronauts on board took aerial photos and video of the massive storm.

Some astronauts and NASA tweeted the recordings of the storm.

But on Sunday when astronauts sent down more video of the storm, there was nobody in mission control to receive it, CBS reported. “We do not have an ops plan on this shift because of Harvey, ironically, so we will get them when we can,” Mission Control responded to the astronauts on the ISS.

The Flight Director at JSC tweeted an eerie photo of Mission Control Sunday, full of computer screens but lacking controllers to stay in contact with the station.

While there were some mission control members at the center it was nowhere near fully staffed. When the storm hit, NASA shut down JSC. On Friday, the Twitter account for communications about emergencies at the center tweeted that the center would be closed all weekend. By Tuesday, the center was still closed. Only “mission essential personnel” were asked to go to the center for work and the situation was set to be evaluated on a day-to-day basis for all other employees.

Ben Honey, a flight controller for the ISS, was tweeting during the storm answering some questions people had on social media. One Twitter user asked him if Mission Control would switch locations, possibly to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center or to Russia. Honey responded simply saying, “There are contingencies if required.” Whether or not those would be necessary or what conditions would make those contingencies necessary was not a subject he touched on. Early on Tuesday he tweeted “All good” to a concerned Twitter user.

Former controllers and those that were considered non-essential personnel were also tweeting at those who were taking shelter at JSC and staying in touch with the astronauts in space. The Director of JSC, Ellen Ochoa, also tweeted to thank those who stayed.

Another Flight Director, Zebulon Scorville, tweeted that on Sunday, controllers were “Standing strong and keeping the lights on. Critical flight controllers camping out in the building.” The team was still there Tuesday working to keep the astronauts on the ISS safe as rain fall reached levels of more then 40 inches.