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British astronaut calls wrong number from space
Posted On Dec 25 2015
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A LUCKY woman just got an accidental call from space after astronaut Tim Peake misdialled her phone number.
“For every month that the crewmember is in orbit they get what’s called a bonus container and they can make special requests”, Vickie Kloeris, the food manager for the ISS told Smithsonian.com.
Britain’s first astronaut on a space mission, Major Tim Peake, accidentally called the wrong number when trying to call home from space.
Major Peake asked the woman ‘Hello, is that planet earth?’
“We have crew members from both the USA and Russian Federation and now the United Kingdom with Tim Peake from the U.K…It’s great to see that, on this space station, that we can work across cultures in a very cooperative way”.
The ISS, which is streaking across the sky at 17,000 miles per hour at an altitude of 250 miles, will be passing over the French-Spanish border at the time.
From southern England, it was due appear in the West at about 3.24am (AEDT) and remain visible for six minutes before disappearing below the southeastern horizon.
Station commander Scott Kelly added: “Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and happy New Year from the International Space Station”.
Mr Peake, 43, who is a former major in the Army, is the first Briton to join the crew of the ISS and is employed by the European Space Agency.
Robin Scagell of the Society for Popular Astronomy said the station would be flying relatively low when it passes over London and would be “the brightest star in the sky, moving rapidly from west to east”.
“As excited children everywhere wait with anticipation for Father Christmas, why not take a look up into the night sky on Christmas Eve and see if you can spot him, (or rather, the ISS)”, the Met Office wrote in a statement on their website days before Thursday’s much-anticipated appearance.
“And although we can’t be with our friends and families this year, we’ll be orbiting the earth 16 times on Christmas Day and sending all our good wishes to everybody back down on handsome planet Earth”.
