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By Theresa Braine, New York Daily News
It can happen to anyone, gravity or no gravity.
An astronaut accidentally dialed emergency services on Earth as he attempted a phone call from the International Space Station.
Dutch
astronaut André Kuipers dialed 9, as even interplanetary communication
systems require, and meant to dial “011,” the code for the U.S. But he
missed the 0, dialing 911 instead, he explained, as reported by Fortune. He hung up and didn’t redial, but 200 miles away – as in down – a situation had been set in motion.
Mayhem
ensued. Alarms sounded. A security team was dispatched to the NASA
office the call had been routed through. Then, a virtual welfare check.
The next day Kuipers, got an e-mail: “Did you call 911?” he told a radio program quoted by Newsweek.
Astronauts
have been able to phone home for at least a decade, according to
Slashgear.com, enabled to VoIP phone service. Wrong numbers are not
uncommon, NASA experts said. But it’s not generally a mistaken cry for
help.
“Many people have gotten calls from space,” Wayne Hale, a former flight director at NASA’s Mission Control, told NPR.
“You’re
carrying your phone around and it’ll ring, and it’ll be the space
station,” NASA chief flight director Holly Ridings, told the website Space Answers in 2013. “It’s really actually kind of cool. It never gets old.”
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