ISS astronaut calls wrong number, asks: 'Is this the planet Earth?'

LONDON, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- A British astronaut aboard the International Space Station tweeted out an apology after making an ultra-long distance wrong number call.

Tim Peake, a member of the European Space Agency and the first Briton to join the ISS crew, tweeted he dialed the wrong number before a lady picked up the phone and he asked, "Hello, is this the planet Earth?"

"I'd like to apologise to the lady I just called by mistake saying 'Hello, is this planet Earth?' -- not a prank call...just a wrong number!" Peake tweeted.

Better Barker, 79, the woman on the receiving end of the wrong-number call, said she thought she was being called by a drunk prankster.

"He said, 'Hello, is that planet Earth?' So I said, 'no,'" Barker told The Mirror. "I thought it was someone who had been out down the pub who was having me on."

Barker said she hung up on the astronaut because she didn't want to "take any more notice of it."