driver Taxi to Buenos Aires (Argentina) who asks for directions for the Russian cosmonauts to stroll in space… That’s the surreal scene that happened on April 19th, when it was International Space Station The ISS was 430 km above the Argentine capital.
Astronauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petline, at that time, ensured the installation of a radiator outside the International Space Station. But in the middle of the mission, an unexpected radio message picked up NASAreports Science and life. A journalist watching the broadcast of the operation watched the entire scene and posted the footage on Twitter.
Same frequency band used
according to him, the driver The taxi driver wanted to check that he understood the address he had been given. A request that the two astronauts could not agree to. The exchange lasted three seconds and surprised everyone watching the live broadcast. The NASA host quickly apologized for the intrusion.
How did this happen? When astronauts leave the International Space Station, they use the UHF radio wave band (300 to 3000 MHz) to communicate with Earth. This frequency band matches the band used by taxi drivers in Buenos Aires. This type of interference can happen again when the International Space Station is over a large city and its hosts are performing an operation that requires communications with the ground base.
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