April 23, 2025

This Week in Amateur Radio

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Argentinian Taxi Radio Interferes With NASA’s Spacewalk Broadcast

“150 Irigoyen, you said?” The innocent question made by an apparent taxi driver has become a sensation in Argentina after the driver’s taxi radio interfered with the signal from the International Space Station and popped up live during NASA’s live broadcast of a spacewalk.

Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin worked overnight on Tuesday to move a radiator from the ISS’ Rassvet module to the Nauka science module, spending a total of seven hours and 55 minutes outside the space station. During their spacewalk, the ISS passed over Argentina several times. It was 12:30 a.m. ET when things started to get weird.

At that time, reporter Manuel Mazzanti was watching NASA’s live broadcast of the spacewalk on the agency’s official channel when he suddenly heard a voice with an Argentinian accent. It appeared to be a taxi driver on his radio confirming whether he had understood an address correctly: Irigoyen (or perhaps Yrigoyen) 150.

The interference was loud and clear, but only lasted three seconds. The NASA TV presenter reacted quickly and apologized for the blip, saying it was a “hot mic.” You can see the moment this happened in a clip Mazzanti posted on Twitter.

Read more – Gizmodo: