> His comms slip-up set off a security alert at the Houston center, he explained, with emergency staff to check the room where the space station’s line connected to Earth.
Dialing 9 and "outside lines" implies there's some sort of PBX system, which makes sense. What I don't get though, is if the outside lines are in Houston, why do you have to dial the international access code 011 to call Houston? I thought maybe there was a country code allocated to the ISS, but according to a Reddit thread, they just use Houston numbers [1]. I think the first bit from the article is just a mistake (eg he wasn't calling a Houston number, just through Houston).
Aside, it's amazing how many (new) PBXs still use the "dial 9" requirement. If you dial a 10 digit number (in North America), it's obviously destined for an outside line. If you avoid assigning extensions that conflict with area codes, you can even use early dialing (where the call is placed as soon as a number pattern is recognized), but that's optional as the system will just wait a few seconds to see if you're dialing more digits or not. Already anyone with an extension that starts with the local area code probably already gets lots of misdialed calls since people forget to dial 9 all the time.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/56yxnd/til_t...