Posted: Tue, Sep 7, 2004, 11:36 PM ET (0336 GMT)
NASA's Kennedy Space Center will not reopen until Monday while crews survey and attempt to begin to repair damage to the spaceport even as another hurricane threatens Florida. KSC officials said they now estimate that 820 panels fell off the Vehicle Assembly Building during the storm; images of the VAB released by NASA Tuesday show swaths of missing panels on the south side of the structure. There are also concerns that the roof of the building suffered damage: a team of 30 people sent to inspect it Tuesday spent only a short time on it when the left after noting it was soggy and weak. Besides the VAB and a shuttle tile manufacturing building, another building that hosts the center's computer system was also damaged in the storm, although the computers themselves appear to have escaped damage. A visitor's center building that contains a refurbished Saturn 5 rocket also lost a portion of its roof. KSC director James Kennedy declined to speculate what effect the damage to the center would have on returning the shuttle to flight next year. KSC officials are also keeping an eye on Hurricane Ivan, a powerful hurricane in the eastern Caribbean that could reach Florida by the weekend, although the storm's current forecasted track keeps it far south of Cape Canaveral.
