Power Outage at NASA Mission Control – Lost Communication to ISS

On July 25, there was an unexpected loss of connection with the International Space Station (ISS) due to a power failure at NASA’s Mission Control in Houston.

d a temporary loss of communication with the International Space Station (ISS).

The outage occurred around 9:00 a.m. ET and interrupted the usual flow of commands and communications between the ground and the orbiting space laboratory. NASA’s mission control team quickly switched to backup hardware to address the issue.

The Mission Control building in Houston was undergoing an upgrade when the power went out. According to the space station program manager, Joel Montalbano, this was the first time the backup systems were needed.

Fortunately, the power outage only affected the ground systems and posed no risk to the ISS or its crew. The seven astronauts on board, including three from NASA, three Russian cosmonauts, and one from Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, were informed about the situation within 20 minutes using alternative communication channels.

The backup command and control system was ready to be deployed, and within approximately 90 minutes, full communication with the ISS was restored.

NASA officials assured that the crew was never in danger during the outage. They intend to look into the situation to see what went down and what they can learn from it.

Four astronauts will go to the International Space Station (ISS) on SpaceX’s Crew-7 mission on a SpaceX Dragon capsule in August. NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and Russia are represented on the crew as astronauts.