太空来电闹乌龙 宇航员拨错号找"地球"

He may have the right stuff, but he got the wrong digits.

尽管他有一身本事，可还是弄错了号码。

Timothy Peake, a former British Army Air Corps officer and current European Space Agency astronaut aboard the International Space Station, phoned home to a wrong number on Thursday.

前英国陆军航空队(British Army Air Corps)军官蒂莫西·皮克(Timothy Peake)目前是欧洲航天局(European Space Agency)驻国际空间站(International Space Station)宇航员。他周四给家里打电话时拨错了电话号码。

After failing to connect, he took his flub to Twitter, posting: “I’d like to apologise to the lady I just called by mistake saying ‘Hello, is this planet Earth?’ - not a prank a wrong number!”

皮克没能与家人接通电话，于是在Twitter上发帖承认错误：“我刚才打错电话了，还说‘你好，是地球吗？’我想向那位女士道歉。这不是恶作剧……只是拨错了号码！”

It was not clear if the person who answered understood how long-distance the call actually was.

还不清楚那名接电话的女士是否知道，这通长途电话实际上有多么长途。

Responding to Mr. Peake’s tweet, one Twitter user wanted to know what the space station’s area code was. But even without that, Earthlings can connect with the station: Its amateur radio frequencies are publicly available, and anyone with the proper equipment and the required radio license can try to call when it passes 250 miles above.

一名Twitter用户回复了皮克的帖子，询问空间站的区号。但即便没有区号，地球上的人也可以与空间站取得联系：国际空间站的业余无线电频率已经对外公布，只要有适当的设备和所需的无线电执照，就可以在空间站经过时，尝试给距地面250英里（约400公里）的空间站打电话。

Mr. Peake, 43, should probably be forgiven for his lack of mastery of ship-to-shore dialing, because he is a recent arrival to the International Space Station. He is the first publicly funded British astronaut, and his voyage to the space station on Dec. 15 was closely watched in Britain, where cost-conscious governments have generally avoided supporting human spaceflight. His job during his six-month mission is running science experiments, he has said on his blog, and in his spare time, he is training for the London Marathon.

43岁的皮克还没有掌控船对岸拨号的技巧，是因为他最近才到达国际空间站，这一点应该原谅他。皮克是第一个获得公共资助的英国宇航员，他于12月15日启程前往空间站，整个航程在英国受到密切关注，在这个国家，注重节省成本的政府通常会避免对载人航天计划予以支持。他在博客上表示，在执行为期六个月的任务期间，他的工作是开展科学实验，业余时间进行训练，为参加伦敦马拉松做准备。