Major Tim Peake has confirmed that he is still regularly asked about the wrong number text he sent from the International Space Station in 2016, including during mission briefings for Britain’s upcoming lunar programme.
The former ISS astronaut, who now serves as a special advisor to the UK Space Agency, revealed that the text has been mentioned in at least three separate ministerial meetings this year. He has been asked about it more frequently than his six-month space mission, his spacewalk to repair the station’s power supply, or his views on propulsion systems.
“I’ve just presented a forty-minute briefing on life support architecture for deep space habitation,” Peake told Made Up News. “The first question was about whether I’d checked the number before texting. The second was about thermal regulation in lunar modules. Then we went back to the text for questions three, four, and seven.”
The message in question, sent on Christmas Day 2016, read: “Hello, is this planet Earth?” Peake had been attempting to contact his family. He reached a woman in Stoke-on-Trent instead.
The incident has since appeared in two GCSE exam papers, one civil service competency framework as an example of communications failure, and an undergraduate dissertation titled “Digital Miscommunication in Low Earth Orbit: A Semiotics Approach.”
Dr Jennifer Hollis, a space policy researcher at Imperial College London, said the text has achieved what she terms “permanent cultural resonance.” She has tracked over 4,000 references to it in British media since 2016, compared to 380 references to Peake’s actual scientific work aboard the ISS.
“Tim Peake ran a marathon on a treadmill in space,” Hollis noted. “He conducted experiments on crystallisation and magnetic fields. He inspired thousands of children to study physics. But yes, what we really remember is that he texted the wrong number.”
Peake’s achievements include completing over 250 scientific experiments during his Principia mission, becoming the first British ESA astronaut to visit the ISS, and holding the record for the most consecutive days spent in space by a UK citizen. None of these facts appear in pub quizzes with any regularity.
The wrong number text does feature in approximately 60% of British pub quizzes, according to a survey by the Campaign for Real Ale. It ranks just below “What year did they stop making the old 50p?” and just above “How many episodes of Fawlty Towers were there?”
When asked if he regretted the message, Peake was diplomatic. “I’ve been to space,” he said. “I’ve looked down at Earth from 400 kilometres up. I’ve seen the curvature of our planet with my own eyes. But sure, let’s talk about autocorrect for another twenty minutes.”
The woman in Stoke-on-Trent could not be reached for comment. She has changed her number twice since 2016.