“There were a couple days we were getting a little tired of eating stuff out of cans,” but that was the worst of it for them.

The places hit hardest were along the coast, rivers and reservoirs. Johnson, while at a low elevation, is far enough away from a water source to keep most of it from flooding. Just the front gate was inaccessible because of flooding, so the scientists took back gates instead.

“The telescope was probably in the safest place possible,” Rieke said.

But the most stressful moments were when they were close to running out of liquid nitrogen to keep the chamber cold. The supply truck was delayed because of the flooding around the city.

Luckily the truck pulled up just in time. Any later, and the team would have had to start warming up the telescope, delaying testing by a few weeks.

Rieke was able to safely leave Houston without delay Aug. 31.

Once in space, the new telescope will park itself 1 million miles away in Lagrange point 2, where it will stably orbit the sun.

The four science instruments on board will be shielded from the heat of the sun and Earth with a sun shield that will unfurl once in space.