A power outage at NASA caused a disruption in communication between Mission Control and the International Space Station on Tuesday.
During the outage, Mission Control was unable to send commands to the space station or communicate with the seven astronauts aboard. The power outage occurred while upgrades were being carried out at the Houston’s Johnson Space Center.
Joel Montalbano, the program manager for the space station, assured that neither the astronauts nor the station were in any danger, as backup control systems quickly took over within 90 minutes. The crew was promptly informed of the situation through Russian communication systems, just 20 minutes after the outage occurred.
This incident marked the first time NASA had to rely on these backup systems to maintain control, according to Montalbano. He expressed hope that the issue would be resolved, allowing for a return to normal operations by the end of the day.
As a precautionary measure, NASA maintains a backup control center located miles away from Houston in the event of a hurricane or other catastrophic event that requires evacuation. However, in this case, the flight controllers remained at Mission Control as the lights and air-conditioning were still functional.
© 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.
Citation:
NASA power outage temporarily halts contact with space station (2023, July 25)
retrieved 26 July 2023
from https://phys.org/news/2023-07-nasa-power-outage-temporarily-halts.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
