Nasa braces for hurricane hit

MELBOURNE, Florida - Nasa ordered the evacuation of the Johnson Space Centre in Houston and turned over control of the International Space Station to its Russian partners as powerful Hurricane Rita barrelled across the Gulf of Mexico.

Many of the space centre's 15,000 government and contractor workers had already left the space centre by the time the evacuation order was given, heeding calls from Texas officials to evacuate the area, Nasa spokesman James Hartsfield said.

The Johnson Space Centre, home to the Mission Control Centre and the headquarters of Nasa's human space-flight programme, is less than 400 metres from Clear Lake, which is part of Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

Workers covered computers and other electronic devices with plastic sheets and picked up loose objects from around the centre. A small group of workers will remain inside Mission Control during the storm, Hartsfield said.

Operations of the space station were passed to the Russian Mission Control complex outside of Moscow. Nasa keeps a small team of flight controllers and support personnel in Russia at all times.

A backup team of space-station experts will be secluded at a US site to help out in case any emergencies arise on the station, Hartsfield said.

Nasa already has been affected by hurricane damage this year. The Michoud Assembly Facility outside of New Orleans and the Stennis Space Centre in Bay St Louis, Missouri, have been shut since Hurricane Katrina hit.

- REUTERS