Space Tweets

There is a stream craze amid the technologically lettered for 'checking in' on location-based amicable networks such as Facebook and Foursquare.

Friends can see where you are and where you have been in the firm of your mobile phone.

The use has since way up to a entire new accumulation of geographical one-upmanship.

But whilst tagging yourself at the Ritz or the Empire State Building may stir some, couple of can tie in Doug Wheelock.

The American wanderer checked in whilst aboard the International Space Station in October final year.

His out-of-this-world refurbish was segment of Nasa's attempts to link up with fans and the broad open by using amicable media.

In 2009, other astronaut, Mike Massimino, became the initial person to twitter from externa; space when he told his supporters that he was "enjoying the splendid views" en-route to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Paolo Nespoli, flight operative on ISS Expedition, has been tweeting and posting cinema on amicable photography site Flickr .

Nasa now administers over 100 Twitter accounts, 20 of that go to astronauts pity sum of their day-to-day lives and experiences, ample to the pleasure of their millions of followers.

"Thanks for an inside look at your prep is to mission," tweeted one. "Love the sum of your training!"

Stephanie Schierholz, amicable media team leader at Nasa, told Click on the BBC World Service that it was about gap up information in ways never before possible.

"As a supervision agency, it's segment of our gene that you must be open, that you need to communicate.

"Nasa, I think, has been unequivocally great about getting the word out, because we've been report our missions since the 1960s. Social media is other tool."

Opening doors

As well as communicating online, Nasa has been running "tweet-ups" for its online fans to obtain together in the actual world.

"Essentially a tweet-up is an chance for our supporters on Twitter to advance to a Nasa location, or a Nasa-related location," Ms Schierholz explained.

"We bring them Nasa astronauts or managers or leaders, basically to open the doors and say this is your space programme, this is what we're up to!"

The events have valid exceedingly renouned amid space fanatics.

"The top figures are for our launch tweet-ups. We entice 150 people to any of those.

"The final time you got 2,700 registrations in 24 hours for those 150 spots," mentioned Ms Schierholz.

Nasa moreover organises reduction grave meetings at other space or Nasa-related locations. Fans at these events can examine in on Foursquare to consequence a special "Nasa Explorer" badge.

And is to exceedingly fervent fan, the location of mayor of the International Space Station is still technically up for grabs.

"Apparently the summary never got to [Mr Wheelock] in space that he indispensable to examine in a second time to be mayor," Ms Schierholz said.

"But I regard he's turn the titular mayor.

"He's up for mayor of the year in the Shorty Awards for Foursquare."

A list of Nasa astronauts now tweeting from space may be found here .