Who thought that NASA spacecraft the Phoenix Mars lander would be so adept at social networking and Web 2.0?
The popular website Twitter, a Web microblogging service has been sending pithy news “tweets” to the cellphones and computers of interested “followers” from the NASA spacecraft. As of today the users following this tweet profile is 35,411. If you are interested in following this Twitter feed yourself you can check it out at: http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix.
Of course, the messages are not coming from Mars. The messages are coming from Veronica McGregor, the news services manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. What she has been doing is forwarding questions to the science team and then posting the answers. Writing the answers in first person to save space with the tweets (since they are of limited length).
Ms. McGregor is amazed at how many people are actually on Twitter following her page. She thinks it is great though because it is a good medium for spreading information about NASA to the younger generations. In the past this information has been spread through podcasts, YouTube videos, blogging, and Facebook. Now with Twitter this information can be sent up to the minute to thousands of people via their computer and cellphones.
See below for some examples of tweets just before the landing.
Atmospheric entry has started. time to get REALLY nervous. Now I’m in the “seven minutes of terror.”
Peak heating will hit in 40 seconds. The heat and energy generated during atmospheric entry would be enough to power 280,000 homes.
parachute must open next. my signal still getting to Earth which is AWESOME!
parachute opening is scariest part for the team.
parachute is open!!!!!
come on rocketssssss!!!!!
I’ve landed!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cheers! Tears!! I’m here!
