NASA Shutters Florida Space Shuttle Port

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – NASA decided on Sunday to close the Kennedy Space Center and told its 13,000 workers to stay home on Monday as Hurricane Wilma makes a beeline for Florida.

Meteorologists were predicting winds of about 60 mph (100 kph) at the space shuttle’s home port at Cape Canaveral, on Florida’s east-central coast, said NASA spokesman Allard Beutel.

In preparation for the storm, the payload bay doors of the space shuttles Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour were closed in case of leaks in the hangar where they are located. Computers and other electronic equipment were covered in plastic.

A plutonium-powered space probe being prepared for launch in January to Pluto was packed inside a transportation carrier, KSC spokesman George Diller said.

A small team of emergency workers will spend the night at the space center to watch over the shuttles, various payloads awaiting rides to orbit and critical ground support equipment.

Wilma was about 240 miles west-southwest of Key West on Sunday afternoon and was expected to hit the southwest Florida coast on Monday morning.

For now, Kennedy Space Center officials expected to be closed only on Monday.

"We anticipate being open for regular business on Tuesday," Diller said.

NASA already has been hard hit by hurricanes this season.

Katrina’s assault on the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast on August 29 shut down the agency’s external fuel tank assembly facility in New Orleans and its shuttle engine testing center in Mississippi.

The agency has been trying to resume construction on the International Space Station, which has been on hold since before the 2003 Columbia disaster. NASA grounded the shuttle fleet during the last shuttle mission and hopes to resume flights in May 2006.