Now A Category Five Storm Headed For Texas Coast

As Hurricane Rita, the season's fifth major tropical storm, grew stronger and continued pushing west across the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday, NASA was doing what it could to make the Johnson Space Center ready for rough weather.

Reuters reports many of the 15,000 JSC employees have already headed for the hills, as have the residents between the space center and Galveston. Many are under mandatory evacuation orders. Workers at the center, meantime, began wrapping computers and sensitive equipment in plastic hardening the facility to Rita's winds, now clocked at more than 165 mph.

International Space Station operations are being passed over the Russian Space Agency near Moscow. A team of NASA space station engineers and scientists will be housed in a yet-to-be-determined location to noodle on any problems that may arise in space while the storm ravages the Texas Gulf Coast.

NASA has already suffered a series of weather-related blows from Hurricane Katrina at its facilities in Stennis, MS, and New Orleans.

FMI: www.nasa.gov