NASA loses contact with ISS for brief spell
image for illustrative purpose
Washington: NASA briefly lost contact with the International Space Station (ISS) after a power outage at the space agency mission control centre in Houston, the media reported. While temporary losses in communications have occurred before, due to systems upgrades on the ground or missed contact with satellites, this outage marked the first time that NASA had to rely on backup control hardware at Johnson Space Center’s Building 30..
According to ISS Programme Manager Joel Montalbano, the outage occurred on Tuesday morning and lasted about 90 minutes. But NASA was able to communicate with the astronauts aboard ISS via Russian systems within 20 minutes after the outage began, he was quoted as saying. The outage also caused no danger for the crew.
“It wasn’t an issue on board. It was purely a ground problem,” he said. He explained that the outage happened due to a pre-planned upgrade to the power systems that triggered some “reconfiguration”. “We knew this (the upgrade work) was going on,” Montalbano said.
