This astronaut mistakenly called 911 from space: Here's what happened

In a recent radio interview with Dutch broadcaster Nederlandse Omroep Stichting, Dutch astronaut André Kuipers recalled how he had accidentally dialled the US emergency services from the ISS.

Unsurprisingly, Kuipers' call saw the US emergency services drop him an email that read, "Did you call 911?".

In case you're wondering, ISS crew members have long-distance phone calls readily available to them.

Phone calls from the ISS are routed through NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and because of the immense distance the signal has to travel, there's a slight delay - around one second.

To make a call, astronauts have to dial 9 for an outside line, and then 011 for an international line.

Kuipers, however, missed the 0, and ended up dialling 911.

Comic though it might be, this is not the first time an astronaut has dialled a wrong number from outer space.

In 2015, Britain's first astronaut, Tim Peake, ended up dialling a wrong number. When the call was picked up by an unsuspecting woman, Peake asked, "Hello, is this planet Earth?"

After the incident was misconstrued as a prank call, Peake apologized on Twitter.