Is it true that an astronaut called his wife from the Moon?

In the Apollo program there was nothing resembling a private call from the surface. Everything ran through a single radio link to the tracking network's antennas and from there to Houston, where the capcom spoke with the crew and the conversation was broadcast live to half the world. Families listened at home through a loudspeaker NASA installed, the famous squawk box, which gave them the same audio as mission control. The only reserved channel was for medical briefings with the flight surgeon.

There was a telephone call, but in the opposite direction. During Apollo 11's first moonwalk, Richard Nixon spoke from the Oval Office with Armstrong and Aldrin through NASA's link; the White House described it as the most historic telephone call ever made from that office. It was brief, broadcast live like everything else, and appears in full in the mission's official transcripts.

Privacy arrived with permanent space stations. The International Space Station has internet telephony: the crew dials numbers on Earth from a laptop, holds regular family video calls, and receives email. Calls arrive with a caller ID that means nothing to the recipient, which has led to some famous mix-ups, including a misdialed number answered by a bewildered neighbor. If someone ever calls their partner from the Moon, it will be with a system like this one, not with 1969's: current lunar plans include a dedicated communications network capable of private links.