ORLANDO, FLA.—On the Space Coast, where some models put Hurricane Dorian touching land Monday, teams at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station are working to secure multimillion-dollar equipment ahead of the storm.

A major storm slamming the space centre facilities head-on would be a first.

Past storms have come close —damage from Hurricane Matthew in 2016 cost KSC millions of dollars in repairs and a Hurricane Frances in 2004 toppled a Mercury-Redstone rocket at KSC’s credentialing centre and tore off panels from the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building, for example.

At Kennedy Space Center, teams are preparing to potentially move the mobile launcher, which is the steel ground structure that attaches to a rocket for preparations and launch. The structure is currently at launch pad 39B and will be used to launch NASA’s upcoming rocket, the Space Launch System, and astronaut capsule Orion for upcoming missions to the moon.

KSC is expecting to move the launcher, if necessary, to the Vehicle Assembly Building, the windowless fortress where NASA assembles rockets. To move it, the 400-foot-tall mobile launcher will be placed on a massive, 6.6-million-pound crawler transporter, used to move spacecraft to launch pads, for the 1.5 kph trip to the Vehicle Assembly Building.

The crawler rolled out to pad 39B Wednesday, beginning the eight-hour, 6.5-kilometre journey. KSC said it is in contact with the Air Force’s Eastern Range about the latest weather predictions and expects to make a decision on moving the launcher in the coming days.

At Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the 45th Space Wing issued a HURCON V alert Wednesday afternoon, signalling a forecast that calls for sustained winds of 93 kph or greater arriving in the area within 96 hours. Teams are preparing personnel and facilities in the case of a storm, the Cape said.

As of 5 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Dorian had strengthened with 129 kph winds, according to the National Hurricane Center, with a trajectory that could potentially put the storm, as Category 3 hurricane, on the Space Coast by early Monday.