From space to MySpace
The World Wide Web just went beyond the world, as the astronauts on the International Space Station now have personal access to the Internet. You'd think the most high-tech group anywhere would have already had the ability to surf the Web, send personal e-mails, update their Facebook pages and tweet to their heart's content, but the connection wasn't there until late last week.
What was their first message? A tweet, of course, from Expedition 22 Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer. He posted this update to his Twitter account, @Astro_TJ:
"Hello Twitterverse! We’re now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station — the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s"
A later tweet said: "Grand opening of the internet on ISS! Not only we can fly 17,500 MPH around the earth, we can also surf the world "
Previous tweets from space had to be e-mailed to the ground where support personnel posted them to astronauts’ Twitter accounts.
The Twitter account to follow the action from on high is: @NASA_Astronauts. Recent tweets include photos showing Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Being truly international, some of the tweets show up in my browser as gibberish because I lack the proper fonts to view all the languages used by the crew.
NASA does a lot more than tweet their updates; its online offerings are vast. You can connect in many ways, including following a Twitter account that will alert you when the station is flying over your location. In addition to Twitter, you can find dozens of places to connect on Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr and UStream.
See the full list of NASA online collaboration here:
http://www.nasa.gov/connect/index.html
In case you're wondering, there's an app for NASA, too:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/iphone/index.html
