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Hurricane Dorian is gaining strength as he heads for Florida. It is now expected that it will become a major category 3 hurricane here on weekends. the latest National Hurricane Center forecasts you anticipate that the storm will fall on the coast Monday and that there is still much uncertainty as to the possibility of landing, it is possible that the Kennedy Space Center, historical space center NASA, with $ 11 billion, to launch rockets orbit and will be an integral part of NASA's future missions to the Moon and Mars. NASA is watching the forecasts closely and has already started making hurricane preparations.
Meteorological models of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts show Dorian continues to travel northwest past the Bahamas before making a sharp westward turn on Friday. The exact timing and magnitude of the turn west of the hurricane is uncertain, which means that we can not know exactly where it will land (or even if it will). But if the current predictions of a landing in central Florida around Melbourne are correct, it would be historic: according to Tropical meteorologist Phil Klotzbach, no major hurricane (category 3 or higher) has touched land so far north of the east coast of Florida since the beginning of detailed records in 1851.
This would also make Dorian a rare threat to the Kennedy Space Center, whose launching ramps and other infrastructure, including the imposing 526-foot-high Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), were designed at the same time. origin to withstand high or low category 2 winds. thunderstorm. Kennedy has already suffered damage from more distant storms: when Sandy passed 200 miles offshore in 2012, a strong push erased part of the shoreline between Launch Pads 39A and 39B, forcing NASA to make an effort multi-million dollar shoreline restoration. When Hurricane Frances made landfall 100 miles to the south as a Category 2 storm in 2004, it destroyed GVA tiles, caused significant damage to other buildings, and caused $ 100 million in property damage. between the space and the military installations of Cape Canaveral.
In 2016, Hurricane Matthew is about to hit the coast of Space Coast as a Category 4 hurricane, a scenario that "could easily have been cataclysmic," as stated at at the time an air force officer. Instead, the storm traveled tens of kilometers offshore and caused only minor damage to the spaceport and Cape Canaveral Air Base.
So, the people of Kennedy take the threat of Dorian seriously. On Friday morning, the spaceport will be upgraded to "HURCON III" status, prompting officials to begin preparations for the hurricane in anticipation of 100 km / h winds within 48 hours. The spaceport will be closed at 6 pm on Saturday, Kennedy Space Center spokeswoman Amanda Griffin told Motherboard in an email.
Griffin said teams are paying close attention to equipment for NASA's Artemis lunar exploration program, including preparing for the mobile launcher's move. his current position on the 39B launch table in the VAB where he could wait for the storm safely. On Wednesday, NASA deployed one of its gigantic trackcars, with a capacity of 6.6 million pounds, on the launch pad so that it could grab the mobile launcher and the move on the inside.
"NASA keeps in touch with the chain is for the latest weather forecasts, which are at the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Base," wrote Griffin in an email. "A final decision on moving the launcher is expected in the near future."
Hurricane Dorian is the last reminder that despite the vital role of the Kennedy Space Center in current and future space exploration, the spaceport is particularly vulnerable to the more terrestrial concerns of climate change and climate change. Much of Kennedy's infrastructure is a few meters from sea level on an exposed sandbank that, according to NASA's own analysis, is threatened by bad weather and floods. Under low sea level scenarios, NASA has found that coastal floods that occur every ten years could be two to three times more common by the middle of the century, with rising sea levels rising. sea amplifying the effects of the storm surge.
Slight changes in Dorian's trajectory could significantly alter its impact on the Kennedy Space Center in the coming days. Hopefully this storm will save NASA – and all other Florida residents – the worst.
This article was originally published on VICE US.
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