Space station restores communication with Earth

NASA is back in contact with the International Space Station after a communications outage of almost three hours Tuesday.

Communications were restored at 12:34 p.m. ET, NASA reported on Twitter.

NASA lost contact with the space station at 9:45 a.m. ET, while the software on the stations flight computers was being updated remotely from the ground by flight controllers in Houston, Texas, NASA reported in a release.

The outage is being blamed on a malfunction of the stations data relay systems, which caused the space stations main computer to bar communication with the satellites that allow it to communicate with NASA.

Communication was briefly restored around 11 a.m. ET as the space station flew over Russian ground stations. At that time, NASA told the space stations crew to connect a backup computer to restore communications.

The U.S. space agency said the stations current commander, Kevin Ford, reported that the station was fine and the six astronauts on board were doing well.

Canadian Chris Hadfield is currently among the crew of the space station. Earlier in the morning, Hadfield had sent out a tweet indicating that the space stations main computers were getting a software upgrade.

Nothing could possibly go wrong, he added at the time.

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Space station restores communication with Earth