The First *Human* Tweet from Space

In June of 2007, NASA’s Office of Space Operations and Innovative Partnership Program, NASA’s CoLab and the National Space Society hosted the Participatory Exploration Summit at Ames Research Center. The summit, among many other things, was really one of the first major catalysts for thinking seriously about how the agency could us the internet, information technologies, and gaming sectors to provide new and exciting ways to connect, engage, inspire, and educate the public about space exploration.  If you have a chance, check out the proceedings from the summit – there are quite a few ideas packed into the proceedings document prepared by Delia that may really play into the future success of NASA’s exploration efforts.

One of the things we discussed (okay, dreamed about) at that meeting was astronauts twittering from space (see page 1 from the proceedings).  Well, I’m happy to report that @NASA has really embraced and leveraged social media to offer a new perspective on spaceflight! This afternoon, Mike Massimino (@astro_mike) became the first astronaut to tweet from space with the following words “From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!” This is a really big step for our space agency! I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to hear about the rest of the Hubble mission first hand from an Astronaut who is there.  As Mike said, this mission will truly be awesome.

A special thanks to @VeronicaMcG and the @MarsPhoenix team for paving the twitter way and showing the rest of us the true potential of the medium!  You definitely deserve that Webby!

And props to the NASA PAO team for the courage to help make it a reality for human spaceflight!  Mark Polansky is already signed up to twitter on the next shuttle mission to the ISS.

I’m really looking forward to this new participatory era of human spaceflight.  The challenge is for us all to think about how we can use social media and virtual environments everyday to create a direct, personal connection with people who don’t usually think about spaceflight and help them experience space travel as we see it!

Mike Massimino’s Twitter account is @Astro_Mike and can be found at Twitter.com/Astro_Mike

Mark Polansky’s Twitter account is @Astro_127 and can be found at Twitter.com/Astro_127

Related News:

• “One Giant Leap for Twitterkind” (Mashable.com)
• “NASA: It’s one small tweet for man… from orbit” (Geek.com)
• “Astro_Mike tweets from space” (abc.net.au)