Call him @Astro_Mike. That's the latest digital moniker of
NASA astronaut Michael Massimino, who has invited the world to tag along via
the Twitter micro-blogging Web site as he trains for a May space shuttle
mission to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope.
Massimino, a veteran spacewalker and Hubble repairman, is
set to make his second trip to the iconic orbital observatory when he and six
other astronauts launch
toward Hubble on May 12 aboard NASA's space shuttle Atlantis. The risky
11-day mission will include five spacewalks and expected to extend Hubble's
lifetime through at least 2014.
Twitter allows users to post 140-character notes about their
current thoughts and actions and to track the posts of others who do the same.
NASA has been using the social networking site to reach out to a Web-savvy
public and promote various space science and mission efforts.
According to Massimino's latest "tweet," he is currently
embroiled "in a
simulator practicing for the first spacewalk on my mission."
"He just started on Friday," NASA spokesperson James
Hartsfield told SPACE.com from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "He
has always been looking for good ways of connecting with the public and telling
the stories of what they're doing."
Massimino is a veteran of two spacewalks, both of which he
performed during his first flight to Hubble during a 2002 service call. He will
perform two of the five planned spacewalks during the upcoming STS-125 shuttle
flight to add new instruments, replace batteries and gyroscopes, attach a
docking ring for future robotic vehicles and make unprecedented repairs to
systems that were never designed to be fixed in space.
The
mission is riskier than recent NASA shuttle missions because it is not bound
for the International Space Station, where astronauts can take refuge if their
orbiter suffers critical damage. Because Hubble flies in a higher orbit and
different inclination than the station, Atlantis will not be able to reach the
orbiting laboratory to ferry its crew to a safe haven. Instead, NASA will have
a second space shuttle on a Florida launch pad ready to launch
a rescue mission, if required.
Massimino is using a mobile device to update his Twitter
messages and is currently the only NASA astronaut to use the online tool for
official space agency business, Hartsfield said. The space agency has a
general, agency-wide NASA Twitter account and uses the tool to spread updates
for many ongoing missions and other probes that have not yet launched into
space.
"Social media is a large and growing sector of
communications," Hartsfield said. "So this is a very neat thing and it offers
Mike a chance to connect with the public."
Hartsfield cautioned Massimino's Twitter followers to be
patient, especially as his mission's launch date draws near.
"Of course, training keeps him very busy," Hartsfield said.
"So we'll see how much he can update."
Click here to
follow Massimino's Twitter updates.
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