NEW YORK, July 25. /TASS/. The Houston Mission Control Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) briefly lost communication with the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday due to power supply problems on the ground, International Space Station (ISS) Program Manager Joel Montalbano told reporters.
"Earlier this morning, [at] about eight o'clock central time [4:00 p.m. Moscow time], we had a power problem in the Mission Control Center Houston, where we lost command, telemetry, voice to the ISS from Mission Control Center Houston," he said. "There was no issue on board, it was clearly a ground problem. We were able to talk to the crew through Russian assets about 20 minutes after the failure. At no time was the crew or the vehicle in any danger."
Montalbano added that it was the first-ever incident when NASA had to use alternative channels of communication with the space station.
In his words, power outages occurred on the ground floor of the command center. The Mission Control Center itself is not on that particular floor of the building and had uninterrupted power supply at the time of the incident, but the equipment enabling it to send command, telemetry, and voice signals to the orbital outpost were off-stream for some time.