A power outage at the US Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), on Tuesday, disrupted communication between the mission control center and the International Space Station.
The space mission control center was temporarily unable to send commands to the station and speak to the seven astronauts in orbit. The power outage occurred while renovation work was underway in the building, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Comments from Space Station Program Director Joel Montelbano:
- The astronauts or the station had no problems whatsoever, and the backup control systems took over within 90 minutes.
-The crew was notified of the problem, through Russian communications systems, within 20 minutes of the outage.
-This is the first time that NASA has had to operate these back-up systems for control.
-NASA hopes to resolve the issue and return to normal operations by the end of the day.
NASA maintains a backup control center miles from Houston, in case a hurricane or other disaster requires evacuations. But in Tuesday's case, the flight controllers at Mission Control remained in place because the lights and air conditioning were still on.
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