Article Posted on : - Aug 20, 2008

NEW YORK (BNS): All the three space shuttles at NASA’S Kennedy Space Centre have been secured in their Orbiter Processing Facilities due to the threat posed by Tropical Storm Fay. The shuttles have been powered down in their hangars and their payload bay doors have been closed to protect them from possible damage.

Critical Hubble Space Telescope and International Space Station flight hardware has also been protectively covered.

Kennedy Space Centre had been ordered to be closed for a period of 24 hours on Tuesday. Though a majority of the workers numbering 15,000 will not report to work, there is a small group of emergency personnel consisting of 200 workers, known as ‘ride-out-crew’ to assess the situation from time-to-time.

The storm was expected to hit Florida's southwest coast on early Tuesday and reach Kennedy by the afternoon with heavy rain and possible tropical storm force wind.

Atlantis, which was to be moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building on Monday, to be joined to an external tank and pair of solid rocket boosters, has not taken place. The move will now take place after the storm conditions have been lifted. Atlantis is set for launch on October 8, on STS-125, a mission to upgrade NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

However, astronauts on the mission are continuing with their training. Spacewalkers John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel are rehearsing servicing procedures inside the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, a gigantic pool, at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.