A power outage at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston led to a loss of communication with the International Space Station the other day. The space agency had to use Russian communications systems to tell the astronauts what had happened. This suggests that other backups will be needed if the ISS becomes a little less international as described.
Michael Collins was said to be the most isolated person in human history due to the Moon closing its channels of communication with Earth while Armstrong and Aldrin were performing their famous trek. This experience was repeated for every subsequent Apollo mission, except 13. The astronauts on the ISS, on the other hand, were not fully exposed to this level of disconnection before communication was restored.
Yet this experience reminds us that it is possible to lose contact with the rest of humanity, even in low Earth orbit. NASA insists the outage poses no danger to the station or crew. Direct communication between Houston and the station was restored within 90 minutes using redundant systems.
In a sense, it’s surprising that nothing like this has happened before since the station launched in 1998. After all, Houston encountered some extreme weather events during this time and the systems continued to operate.
Reflecting the value NASA places on the lives of its astronauts, a backup control center was built outside of Houston, but this time it was not activated.
NASA certainly doesn’t want to escalate this event. The ISS’ social media accounts and the main NASA account make no mention of this event. Only the last paragraph of the daily update on the ISS blog addresses this issue.
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