NASA mission specialist Michael Massimino is tweeting as he prepares to board space shuttle Atlantis on Monday.
“Putting notes in my flight notebook, making phone calls and trying my best to relax, adrenaline is starting to flow,” Massimino posted 20 hours ago.
One of seven astronauts set to rocket into space to service the Hubble Space Telescope, Massimino is the first spacewalker to use Twitter, giving the world unprecedented personal access into his life before blast off.
With five scheduled spacewalks, the task of fixing defunct science instruments (equipment, which according to NASA wasn’t meant for handling in orbit) and an increased danger to the crew from space junk because of Hubble's extremely high and littered orbit 350 miles up -- Massimino may not have time to micro-blog about his mission. However, for the 193,890 people currently following “Astro_Mike,” receiving the first tweet from outer space would be an experience that’s (pun intended) out of this world.
In an interview with Computerworld, Massimino said that NASA is trying to figure out technical details that would enable him to use the social networking service from space.
For now, it remains to be seen if Massimino will have the time and technology to tweet during the 11-day final NASA service mission to Hubble.
Find out along with the rest of the world by following “Astro_Mike” on Twitter.
Update:
Although we haven't heard from Astro_Mike yet, here's the last tweet he sent to followers yesterday morning before launch.
"I'm going to put my spacesuit on, next stop: Earth Orbit!!"
