A brief power outage took place at NASA’s headquarters, located in Houston United States. This caused a voice communication blackout with the International Space Station (ISS) and forced NASA to utilize backup systems for the first time. The outage took place on Tuesday, July 25, and lasted about 90 minutes. In spite of the tense moments, astronauts aboard the ISS were never at risk, according to ISS Program Manager Joel Montalbano.
“It wasn’t an issue on board. It was purely a ground problem.”
Among the astronauts who were affected by the outage, there is Frank Rubio. He has been stranded in space for 10 months due to malfunctions in his spacecraft, and unfortunately, he lost contact with the International Space Station. In addition, he was not the only one who had communication difficulties, as other astronauts including Rubio’s colleagues Stephen Bowen, and along with Woody Hoburg, Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Andrey Fedyaev, and Emirati astronaut Sultan Alneyadi were also at the space station.
Thankfully, NASA was able to c communicate with the crew after 20 minutes with the help of Russian systems. Still, it affected the hardware that gives communications, such as voice contact, telemetry, or data about the space station’s pressure levels, power, and position. This power outage was the result of some undergoing upgrades to the power systems. Apparently, the blackout was caused by a system “reconfiguration.” About this, Montalbano clarified:
“We knew this (the upgrade work) was going on. In preparation for that, we have the backup command and control system that we would use if we have to close the center for a weather emergency.”