Spacecraft and rocket ships were designed to soar up into the sky and beyond the planet's boundaries to launch studies about what lies out there and to discover possibilities of life apart from our own. They were not meant to explore the underwater environment of the Earth.
Coastlines along the United States are moving up to rising sea levels, and are now seen to pose a threat to NASA's launch sites, along with its facilities. If the sea levels keep on rising, the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and other NASA launch sites may, in the future, be submerged in water.
"Every NASA center has its own set of vulnerabilities, and some are more at risk than others," said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a climatologist at NASA, adding that the rising sea levels is a "very real challenge" across all the centers situated just along the coast.
NASA's airfields, launch pads, laboratories, testing facilities, data centers and space-related infrastructures cover about 850 square kilometers, hold 60,000 employees and are worth $32 billion, all of that currently threatened by the harm brought about by rising sea levels.
The rate of the rise of sea levels this year has doubled in the last two decades, and is the fastest yet seen in 2,000 years. The warmer oceans, melted polar ice and porous landmasses that have now subsided contribute to the global mean sea level rising by eight inches since 1870.
Buildings and launch pads at the Kennedy Space Center are only a few hundred feet away from the Atlantic Ocean. In Virginia, the Wallops Flight Facility, also habituated with launch pads and buildings, is situated at more or less the same distance to the Atlantic. The site is active in launching rockets for the space agency's exploration missions.
Also in Virginia, the Langley Research Center is just at the Back River in Hampton and near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. The Ames Research Center stands along the south end of the San Francisco Bay, while Johnson Space Center located in suburban Houston is on an inlet of Galveston Bay - Clear Lake.
These facilities all stand from five to 40 feet above mean sea level, which is actually higher than NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, sitting behind earthen levees below sea level. The site had taken in over a billion gallons of water after Hurricane Katrina, which employees had to pump.
For some time now, the waters have been moving toward the land and according to NASA, conservative climate models project the sea level there to climb up to five to eight inches in 2050, and may cause coastal property worth $66 billion to $106 billion to be submerged in the rising water levels.
