Astronaut Tim Peake makes call from space… dials wrong number

“Just a wrong number”, he tweeted from his space station International Space Station (ISS).

Peake later clarified that it wasn’t a prank call and he had genuinely dialled a wrong number.

A United Kingdom astronaut has apologised for dialling wrong number and saying, “Hello, is this planet Earth?”. Peake’s crewmates are NASA’s Scott Kelly and Tim Kopra and Russians Mikhail Kornienko, Yuri Malenchenko and Sergey Volkov.

Peake, 43, is the first Briton aboard the space station, and the first fully British professional astronaut employed by a space agency.

Life-long fan Andrew Rushton started the campaign on Twitter earlier this year, which left Peake persuaded to take it with him.

Peake was selected as an ESA astronaut in May 2009.

During his six-month stay on the space station, Peake go round the Earth 2,700 times, traveling at 17,500mph (28,200kph).

He later tweeted a picture of a Stoke City FC flag in the space station.

Later today, Britons could get a glimpse of the ISS as it soars 250 miles above the Earth.

From the south east of England, the ISS will appear from the west and remain visible for six minutes before vanishing below the south-eastern horizon.

More likely, you will believe it to be a prank call.

“So we’ll be able to see a different object flying over the rooftops on Christmas Day”.