Calling International Space Station

An amateur radio enthusiast has successfully made a call to the International Space Station, chatting with a US astronaut for about 45 seconds.

14:54 07 August 2015

Adrian Lane from Gloucestershire sent out a call signal to the ISS and was “stunned” when a US astronaut replied.

 

He said: "They came back to me and said, 'Receiving you - welcome aboard the International Space Station.”

 

Mr Lane, from Coleford, has been trying to contact the ISS for a month and he finally got through at the end of a four-minute “contact window.”

 

"It was a very hectic time on the bands, people were trying hard to get through," he said.

 

"So, I just sat back and waited until the mainstream calling had died down a little bit and gave them a call and they came back to me."

 

Sharing information about this chat with the astronaut, he said: "I asked him what the stars looked like from up there and he came back to me and said with no atmosphere up here the stars are really bright," he said.

 

"But he told me when you look down on earth it's something else - it's just a mass of colour where everything else up here is black."