First Twitter Message From Space Sent

Astronaut Mike Massimino has boldly gone where no man has gone before: He sent the first Twitter message from space.

Massimino began using the microblogging Web site a few months ago, updating his followers on the day-to-day life of an astronaut and his training for the upcoming mission.

Massimino and the other six members of the space shuttle Atlantis' trip to service the Hubble Space Telescope launched Monday. His first Twitter message (called a "tweet") from space communicated his excitement about the launch — in under 140 characters (one of the site's constraints).

"Launch was awesome!!" Massimino tweeted Tuesday via his Twitter alter ego @Astro_Mike. "I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!"

Since then, he's sent a couple more messages through the social networking technology. Massimino transmits his messages to Mission Control on the ground, and NASA posts them to the Web at: http://twitter.com/astro_mike.

"Rendezvous and grapple were great, getting ready for our first spacewalk," Massimino tweeted Thursday.

Massimino is a veteran spacewalker making his second trek to Hubble. He took up Twitter at the suggestion of NASA's Public Affairs Office, as a way to give the public a peek at life as an astronaut.

"Being an astronaut's a cool job, we're very fortunate to have it and day-to-day we get to do some fun things," Massimino said before flight. But the busy schedule can make it hard to reach out to people, he said. "The opportunity to use Twitter has been great, because by definition it has to be short."

While he's doing his best to stay in touch from orbit, there are some times that Twitter will be technologically out of reach for Massimino.

"We do not have a text device certified for spacewalks, so during that period he'll be unavailable," said fellow astronaut Scott Altman, commander of Atlantis' STS-125 mission.

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There is plenty of water on the moon, NASA confirms!

WASHINGTON: There is indeed water on the moon - as first indicated by India's maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan - and plenty of it, US space scientists said on the basis of impacts made by a new satellite.

"Indeed yes, we found water," Anthony Colaprete, the principal investigator for US space agency NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, said in a news conference on Friday.

The satellite, known as Lcross, slammed into a crater near the Moon's south pole a month ago. The impact carved out a hole 60 to 100-feet wide and kicked up at least 24 gallons of water.

"We got more than just whiff," said Peter H Schultz, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University and a co-investigator of the mission. "We practically tasted it with the impact."

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had announced the path-breaking discovery of water on the moon by India's Chandrayaan-1 on September 24 after data from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument indicated the presence of water molecules on the lunar surface.

M3 was one of the 11 scientific instruments onboard Chandrayaan that ISRO launched October 22, 2008, but the moon mission had to be aborted on August 30 after Chandrayaan lost radio contact with the earth.

The new US Lcross mission consisted of two pieces - an empty rocket stage to carve into the lunar surface and a small spacecraft to measure what was kicked up, but it too slammed into the surface.

The twin impacts in the Cabeus crater October 9 created a plume of material from the bottom of a crater that has not seen sunlight in billions of years, NASA said.

The plume travelled at a high angle beyond the rim of Cabeus and into sunlight, while an additional curtain of debris was ejected more laterally.

"We're unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbour and, by extension, the solar system," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The moon harbours many secrets, and LCROSS has added a new layer to our understanding."

"We are ecstatic," said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

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Water on the Moon; Even Google’s Celebrating!

Google’s been on a homepage logo changing spree: they’ve celebrated H.G. Wells, the bar code, Confucious, Gandhi, and Sesame Street over the last few months alone.


If you check Google.com now though, you’ll see that the search giant is celebrating something different: the discovery of water on the moon! NASA made the stunning announcement earlier today after its moon bombing mission successfully revealed water under the lunar surface. And now the GoogleGoogle logo depicts the bombing revealing water.

When you think about it, Google had a quick turnaround time for this logo. As fellow space enthusiasts, our hats go off to NASA and the men and women behind the successful mission. Hopefully this is only the beginning of something even bigger than ourselves.

Water on the moon:
YouTube Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpsGO-JhrJQ