The two-way communication between NASA’s astronauts orbiting on the International Space Station and Mission Control had to overcome a major hurdle on Tuesday morning after power issues in Houston.

ISS Program Manager Joel Montalbano said the team in Houston lost command, telemetry and voice with the orbiting station around 9 a.m. EDT and was not able to regain communication for about 90 minutes.

“It wasn’t an issue on board. That was purely a ground problem,” he said. “At no time was the crew or the vehicle in any danger.”

NASA was able to get into contact with its crew with the help of the Russian partners on the station about 20 minutes after the problem arose.

Montalbano said that they had a backup control center in place already because they knew work was being done in Houston to upgrade Johnson Space Center’s power systems. That work ended up taking out the power on the first floor, which caused the break in communication.

The flight control team was able to remain at JSC and use the hardware that went active at the backup command center to regain full communication with the ISS.

“We knew this work was going on, and in preparation for that we have the backup command and control system that we would use if we have to close the center for weather emergency, especially important during the hurricane season,” he said.

Montalbano said they would study why the issue occurred to make sure it doesn’t happen again. He said this was the first time NASA had to activate the backup control hardware.

“We’ll better understand what happened and then take lessons learned and move forward,” he said.