As the shuttle docked at the Russian space station MIR, a hacker tapped into the national aeronautics and space administration computer system which monitored the heartbeat, pulse and medical condition of astronauts.

"We had an activity at NASA centre where a hacker was overloading our system. To such an extent that it interfered with communications between the NASA centre, some medical communications and the astronaut aboard the shuttle," said Roberta Gross, inspector general at NASA, in a BBC documentary programme.

NASA was forced to switch systems and talk to the astronauts via the Russian station MIR. Gross said NASA has numerous fail-safe measures to ensure communications, but it shows that the potential hackers are capable of doing some real damage to NASA's mission and astronaut safety." In the past year, NASA has experienced more than 500,000 cyber attacks, the report said."Everybody knows if there's a problem at Houston, a potential vulnerability or someone is able to supersede the system we set up, that's dangerous," Gross said.