Yesterday, at approximately 7:22 p.m., local time, the Moscow’s Mission Control experienced something you never want to happen when the mission you’re controlling is playing out outside the planet: silence. Complete, utter silence. Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, had lost contact with its satellites — all of them. Which meant, as well, that it had lost contact with the International Space Station, and with the cosmonauts who call it home.
“Our specialists lack the ability to control the civilian satellites or send commands to the Russian segment of the ISS,” a Roscosmos worker told RIA Novosti, Russia’s state-owned news agency, at the time of the malfunction. That worker estimated that the glitch would take at least 48 hours to fix.
via The Atlantic
November 16, 2012
