On Tuesday, July 25, a power outage occurred at NASA headquarters in Houston, resulting in a temporary disruption of communications with the International Space Station (ISS).

This incident marked the first time since the ISS became fully operational in 2009 that NASA had to depend on its backup control systems to re-establish contact with the astronauts aboard the station, situated hundreds of kilometers above Earth’s surface.

The outage lasted approximately 90 minutes before normal communications were restored, Science Alert has reported.

During the interruption, NASA maintained contact with astronauts Frank Rubio, Woody Hoburg, and Stephen Bowen by utilizing the Russian communication systems as an interim solution.

The outage, which unexpectedly disrupted telemetry, voice communication, and command, was caused by planned upgrades to the ground power system at the Johnson Space Center building.

Although the outage was not anticipated, NASA swiftly responded, and within just 20 minutes, mission control managed to establish communication with the space station using Russian systems.

Furthermore, the backup control center, located several miles away, quickly came online to ensure continuity and support during the incident.

Written by staff