How NASA kept the ISS flying while Harvey hit Mission Control
In the days before Harvey hit Texas, flight controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center outside of Houston had a decision to make: should they evacuate or ride out the storm at the agency’s Mission Control Center? The dilemma wasn’t just about the safety of the flight controllers. These personnel are tasked with flying the International Space Station — a round-the-clock job that can’t be done just anywhere. If there’s a gap in ground communication, it could put the astronauts in danger.
“It’s 100 percent the flight controllers on the ground flying the space station,” Zebulon Scoville, NASA’s lead flight director of Expedition 52 for the International Space Station, tells The Verge. “If that capability is lost, then that can be a risk to…
