Astronauts Need Tech Support Too

If you try to log into Outlook to check your email, and the service doesn’t load, what do you do? Maybe you check your internet connection, but that’s fine, so you make sure your password is correct, and it is. Once you exhaust all options on your end, you likely reach out to tech support to fix the issue. Well, as it turns out, astronauts do the same thing—even from outer space.

It happened during the crew’s first day in space: Reid Wiseman, Artemis II Commander, reached out to Mission Control, specifically for tech support for Microsoft Outlook, as well as Optimus software. It seems Wiseman’s email wasn’t working on his personal Microsoft Surface Pro: “I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working. If you want to remote in and check Optimus and those two Outlooks, that would be awesome.”

Luckily, this didn’t turn into a dramatic affair. Even though Wiseman was all the way in outer space, tech support at Mission Control was able to remotely access Wiseman’s PC. They soon contacted Artemis II with a positive update:

“We wanted to let Reid know we are done remoting into his [personal computer]…We were able to resolve the issue for Optimus, and for Outlook, we were able to get it open. It will show offline, which is expected.”

Artemis flight director Judd Frieling explained what happened during a press conference on Thursday: “This is not uncommon. We have this on-station all the time. You know, sometimes Outlook has issues getting configured, especially when you don’t have a network that’s directly connected. And so essentially we just had to reload his files on Outlook to get it working.”