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When we say Hurricane Rita affected everybody on the upper Texas coast, we mean EVERYBODY. NASA says the Johnson Space Center has regained control of the International Space Station, after shifting it to Russia because of the hurricane.
NASA moved control of the space station to Russia last Wednesday, the same day it evacuated and closed the Johnson Space Center.
Navias says NASA also kept another team of controllers and space station experts secluded at a place far inland in this country to help out if any emergencies came up on the station, but nothing unusual happened, at least not up there.
NASA keeps a team of flight controllers and support personnel at the Russian space center at all times just for situations like this, and this was the second time the backup controllers have taken over control of the space station. They did it for a short time a few years ago when it appeared that a tropical storm was going to cause problems. Even though this hurricane didn’t cause any damage at JSC, other NASA facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi were damaged by Hurricane Katrina a month ago.