‘Hello, is this planet Earth?’ Tim Peake fails to phone home

Astronauts Tim Kopra and Scott Kelly, from the U.S. space agency Nasa, went outside the ISS to fix a broken component.

Major Peake gave an unsuspecting woman a shock after calling her by mistake and asking “hello, is this planet Earth?” when she picked up.

Peake quickly took to Twitter late Thursday to insist that the incident was not a prank call, “just a wrong number!” and that he was trying to connect to his home.

In a milestone for worldwide space travel and cosmic cable-laying, proud astronaut Tim Peake has achieved the dream and crimped off the first ever British length on an orbital space station.

Recently, he phoned home – as in Earth – but got the number wrong.

An astronomer told Britons they might have a chance to view the space station as it transits above the earth on Christmas Day.

It reflects the sun’s light as it passes overhead and so appears as a giant, star-like object moving across the night sky.

The 43-year-old blasted off from Kazakhstan on December 15 with fellow astronauts Tim Kopra from the United States and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko on a six-month mission.

Check the rules on USAjobs.gov: you have to be an American to get in NASA’s corps. Earlier this week, the space traveller was forced to leave a voicemail on his parents’ answering machine when they missed his call.

Later today, the astronauts on board the ISS will be foot prepared by celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal.