NASA: Mission Control Loses Communication with International Space Station

Houston, we have a problem. The International Space Station lost communication with Houston's Mission Control on the ground Tuesday morning, according to NASA. The announcement comes after one of the station's data relay systems malfunctioned.

According to NASA, Houston flight controllers were updating software onboard the station's flight computers when the incident occurred. Fortunately, a backup computer was able to take over critical station functions from the primary computer. Yet that same backup computer left astronauts unable to communicate with Earth.

Even unable to communicate with Mission Control, though, the crew soon set to work. They found that they could communicate with Houston as the ISS flew over Russian ground stations before 11 a.m. During that time, the crew was instructed to connect a backup computer to begin the process of restoring full communications with Houston.

Currently, the ISS can only communicate with Mission Control every 90 minutes as it passes over Russia. Chris Hadfield, one of the astronauts on board the ISS, tweeted on Tuesday morning, "Good Morning, Earth! Today we transition the Space Station's main computers to a new software load. Nothing could possibly go wrong."

How wrong Hadfield was, though. The new software was most likely the reason for the malfunctioning computer. The crew is not currently in any danger, though, and Expedition 43 Commander Kevin Ford said that the station's status was fine and that the crew was doing well, according to 13 News.

Currently, the station is carrying one American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts. While the loss in communications is certainly not unprecedented, it is a cause for concern, according to CNN.com.