A power outage at NASA headquarters in Houston caused a disruption in communications with the International Space Station (ISS). This marked the first time since the ISS became fully operational in 2009 that NASA had to rely on its backup control systems to re-establish contact with the astronauts on board.

The power outage occurred on Tuesday, July 25, and lasted approximately 90 minutes before normal communications could be resumed. During this time, NASA communicated with the astronauts using the Russian communication systems on board the space station.

The Expedition 69 crew, consisting of astronauts from NASA, Roscosmos, and the UAE, including Frank Rubio, Woody Hoburg, Stephen Bowen, Dmitri Petelin, Andrey Fedyaev, Commander Sergey Prokopyev, and Sultan Alneyadi, were not in any danger during the outage.

The outage was a result of planned upgrades to the ground power system at the Johnson Space Center. While the outage was unexpected, NASA’s mission control quickly regained contact with the space station using the backup control center.

“We knew this work was going on, and in preparation for that we have a backup command and control system,” said Joel Montalbano, space station program manager at NASA. “Within about 90 minutes, we were up and running with full command, telemetry, and voice to the International Space Station.”

NASA has resolved the issue and intends to investigate the incident to prevent similar disruptions in the future. The space agency aims to ensure uninterrupted communications with the ISS throughout its remaining years of operation before its planned deorbit in 2031.

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