spacetoday.net: ISS suffers temporary power outage

Posted: Mon, Feb 12, 2007, 8:01 PM ET (0101 GMT)
ISS illustration (NASA)

The International Space Station suffered a power outage Sunday that cut off communications with Earth for about 90 minutes, NASA announced Monday. The power outage took place shortly after 1 am EST (0600 GMT) Sunday, when a circuit breaker tripped after an electrical switching unit malfunctioned. Communications with mission control were re-established around 2:35 am EST (0735 GMT) Sunday, and the crew spent the rest of Sunday and into early Monday restoring other systems affected by the power outage, including several scientific experiments and one of the station's attitude-controlling gyroscopes. Other key systems, including life support, were not affected by the outage.