Harshit Singh
The International Space Station and Mission Control were unable to communicate on Tuesday due to a NASA power failure.
The seven astronauts in space couldn’t communicate with Mission Control or receive commands from the station. The Johnson Space Centre in Houston facility was undergoing renovations when the electricity went out.
Joel Montalbano, the programme manager for the space station, stated that there was never any risk to the crew or the station, and backup control systems took over within 90 minutes. Within 20 minutes after the outage, the crew received word of the issue via Russian communication channels.
According to Montalbano, this is the first time NASA has had to activate these backup systems to assume control. He stated that NASA aimed to fix the problem and resume regular operations before the end of the day.
In the case of a hurricane or other disaster requiring evacuations, NASA keeps a backup control centre miles away from Houston. However, on Tuesday, the lights and air conditioning were still functional, so the flight controllers remained at Mission Control.
