The system outage, which occurred at approximately 1:30 p.m., April 12, disabled the phone system and all computer networking for several hours. While technicians were able to reinstate network connectivity by 3 p.m., VoIP phone service did not return until 7:30 p.m.

"The technicians were doing standard configurations and adding new users when the system shut down," said Sonja Alexander, spokesperson for NASA. "But, during the outage, key NASA employees were able to continue working by using their cell phones."