Tweets from Outer Space

By: Nate Nelson (Contributing Writer)

Whether one considers it absolutely shocking or completely inevitable, the first Tweet has been sent live from outer space. Colonel Timothy J. (TJ) Creamer – the Flight Engineer for Expedition 22 – made use of the brand new Crew Support LAN aboard the International Space Station.

Astro_TJ (Colonel Creamer’s Twitter handle) is a regular contributor to the popular social media site, although his previous Tweets from the ISS had been emailed to ground control and updated from there. The atmosphere-breaking Tweet read as follows: “Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station — the 1st live tweet from Space! More soon, send your ?s”

The Crew Support LAN is a new feature aboard the ISS, and will allow crew indirect access to the Internet through a ground-based computer. In addition, when the ISS is in contact with the ground, astronauts will be able to access email, Internet telephone, and videoconferencing. NASA was careful to delineate that astronauts aboard the ISS would be subject to the same computer use guidelines as their colleagues on the ground, presumably so they would not waste precious spacewalking time updating their Facebook or watching videos on YouTube.

(via PCMag.com)