NASA’s Kennedy Space Center could soon be underwater as sea levels rise because of climate change

Rising sea levels are threatening the majority of NASA’s launch pads and multi-billion dollar complexes famous for training astronauts and launching historic missions into space. From Cape Canaveral in Florida to mission control in Houston, Texas, the US space agency is busily building seawalls where possible and moving some buildings further inland.

Five of the seven major NASA centers are located along the coast, because being close to the water is a logistical necessity for launching rockets and testing spacecraft.

Many NASA centers have already faced costly damage from encroaching water, coastal erosion and potent hurricanes.

The most iconic launchpad lies in Florida at the Kennedy Space Center, the liftoff point for the Apollo missions to the moon and many space shuttle flights over the past three decades.

‘We are acutely aware that, in the long-term sense, the viability of our presence at Space Coast is in question,’ said Kim Toufectis, a facilities planner in NASA’s Office of Strategic Infrastructure to Gizmodo. 

According to NASA’s planning and development office, rising sea levels are the single largest threat to the Kennedy Space Center’s continued operation.

Scientists at the University of Florida say the problem has been ignored until recently.

‘We were a little blind to it, like pre-Katrina New Orleans,’ said one of the researchers, assistant professor Peter Adams of the UF Geological Sciences department. 

‘Now that we’ve seen it, we’re sensitive to it.’

Adams and associate professor of geology John Jaeger, who have been studying Cape Canaveral’s dunes and beach since 2009, say the impacts became most apparent after Hurricane Sandy.

‘Sandy got a lot of press up north, but it really did a tremendous amount of damage at Cape Canaveral,’ Jaeger said.

‘Areas that had previously been relatively stable for decades… suddenly they were gone.’

Adams said a combination of climate change-related sea-level rise and increased wave energy is almost certainly to blame.

‘Certainly it’s occurring now,’ he said. ‘Is it affecting NASA infrastructure? The answer is yes.’

Nancy Bray, director of center operations for Kennedy Space Center, said NASA is taking the situation seriously and has plans for dealing with it. 

The research came about after NASA partnered with the U.S. Geological Survey and UF to figure out why chronic erosion was happening along a roughly 6-mile stretch of beach between launch pads 39A and 39B – the ones used for Space Shuttle and Apollo missions.

The problem had been occurring for years but seemed to be growing worse, beginning with the spate of hurricanes that struck Florida in 2004.

Faced with the question of what was causing the increased vulnerability in that part of the shoreline, they soon came to the conclusion that the culprits were sea-level rise and wave climate change.