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Astronaut dials the wrong number from space, surprises Earthling
// The Verge
Picture this: it's Christmas Eve, and for some reason you weren't able to reunite with your family. Maybe you had to work, maybe your flight was canceled. You've been waiting for them to call you so you can talk to them all on speaker phone, so when the phone rings you rush to answer it. Giddy with anticipation, you expect to hear a Christmas cacophony — but instead you hear the voice of a lone man. He asks, "Hello, is this planet Earth?"
Great, a prank call. Who even makes those anymore? What's next, a question about Prince Albert?
Hi, can I please speak to I.P. Freely?
But when your disappointment wears off, it's replaced with surprise — the man calling you is Tim Peake, one of the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, and he just made a simple mistake on a cosmic scale.
Last night, this actually happened — Peake calling the wrong number, that is. While random citizens contacting the station via radio isn't necessarily new, a misplaced call coming from the other side is a bit more rare.
And yet, this wasn't even Peake's first phone mishap on the station, even though he's only been there less than a month. Earlier this week he attempted to call his parents in the UK, but they had left the house during his downtime. Peake had to leave a voicemail:
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