Astronaut dials 911 from space

An astronaut accidentally dialled 911 from space.

Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers was trying to contact NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston when he accidentally called the number for the US emergency services, instead of dialling 9 for an outside line and then 011 for an international line.

According to Nederlandse Omroep Stichting, he said: "I made a mistake, and the next day I received an email message: 'did you call 911?' I was a little disappointed that they had not come up."

The 60-year-old also explained how easy it is to communicate with earth from a space station in obrit, suggesting that terrestrial phones can be reached via satellites around 70 per cent of the time.

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