The power outage at NASA caused a disruption in communication between the Mission Control Center and the International Space Station.

“(Space Mission Control) was unable to send commands to the station and speak to the seven astronauts in orbit, due to a power outage while modernization work was underway in the building at Johnson Space Center in Houston,” said space station program manager Joel Montalbano.

“The astronauts or the station were not in any danger whatsoever,” Montalbano said, adding that the backup control systems took over within 90 minutes.

He added, “This is the first time that NASA has had to operate these back-up control systems, and NASA hopes to resolve the issue and return to normal operations by the end of the day.”

NASA maintains a backup control center miles from Houston in the event of a hurricane or other disaster requiring evacuations./ End

Source: National Iraqi News Agency