Future Mars explorers will be grateful to the crew of Mars500, a pioneering simulation of a manned space mission to Mars began on June 3, 2010. Mars500 crew member Diego Urbina, of Italian-Colombian nationality, will tweet his experience as @diegou.
In this ambitious experiment, the longest ever attempted, a crew of 6 will spend 520 days confined in an isolation facility simulating a spaceship, with no contact with the outside world other than the radio communication and data links of a space mission to Mars. This experiment will help learn more about some of the most challenging and little known aspects of long duration trips to Mars, i.e. psychological and medical issues.
First off, let me make it clear up front so that there is no confusion: this is a project that I'm volunteering for. I'm not getting paid to do it. It is on my own time. Second, it was written about in the news media months ago so this isn't breaking news.
Are we good? Good. So I'm on this project and I was chosen to be a part of the social media team. We're meeting in a couple of weeks, but before that happens we were given an assignment. I figured - it's the social media team, why not use social media as a way to do the assignment?
The assignment was for me to look at my social networking habits - Facebook, Twitter, etc, and look at what got me to the people/organizations/conversations that I participate in most often - what value do they bring to me? What makes them appealing?
Whew! The JSC Tweetup is over & I've finally had some time to sit down and collect my thoughts.
It's been a very hectic week, from working STS-130 to the Tweetup to managing to squeeze in a few world domination discussions with @flyingjenny since she was at my house, there wasn't much time to stop and take it all in.
I'm very sorry that I couldn't participate on the tour, but such is life and being a Flight Controller for a few years now I've learned that you really can't plan anything, from vacations to family events to holidays to Tweetups, everything's on hold until wheel stop - and then there's another one!
For now at least, there's another one. A few other ones. Even though I wasn't able to join the actual tour, I was able to attend the events the night before and the night of the Tweetup. I was very excited to meet everyone who I've been talking to only virtually for almost a year now. Finally, I get to show you what we do!
I posted this on my personal blog yesterday, but felt it would be well received here as its as much about me as saying thanks for everything so far
Well I am a bit of a 'Johnny-Come-Lately' to the whole Twitter scene. I had seen it, I know of others that use it, but never really bothered with it as it was just another password to remember and another internet thing to try and remember to write to...
Boy was I wrong!
Now I readily admit to being a geek of the computer persuasion, I am also a mad keen aviation buff (refer to my job title as well!) as well as a space-geek. The space-geek in me only ever surfaced every now and then. I would watch Shuttle launches on NASA TV when I remembered them being on, I would read the NASA site from time to time and I have plenty of books on my shelves at home I have collected since a kid.
My biggest dream (still is!) is to be an Astronaut, I still want to be the first Australian woman onto the ISS.
MarsDrive is a space advocacy group originating in Melbourne Australia and incorporated on the USA side in Austin, Texas as a 501(c)3 nonprofit.
We focus on Mars. ("Within our reach... within our lifetimes.")
But we're not just about Mars. We favor development of space tourism, or Earth orbit, of lunar and asteroidal exploration and mining, and much more. In essence, we favor all peaceful uses of space, especially by NewSpace. We believe that space is essentially infinite and so is not a zero-sum endeavor. We don't view a dollar spent on the moon as a dollar taken away from Mars.
In addition, it's our desire to be the most outreach-oriented of all the space groups. We've barely started working toward that goal. Any help is appreciated. "To take people to space, we have to take space to the people."
We're passionate about social media, but like every space group, we are short on time, money, and staff.
Join our Facebook Cause and follow us on Twitter! (@MarsDrive)
You are starved for current NASA TV images of your favorite space mission, and are on the road with no TV set or Internet access handy, but you have a mobile phone with a data plan. What can you do? Bookmark these links:
Is a 3 page list of all the great Space Twitters we have all found and shared. But the way it is now isn't very helpful to most of us. We each have special areas of interest and expectations of our own time lines, so to make these Twitters really accessible to everyone we need to get them categorized and tagged so that they can be displayed in a browse-able directory and pulled up by search.
We have one set of categories set up right now, Space Science, that you are familiar with on your profile where you can choose up to four of them. There is also a tag attached, thats the link that shows up in that cool spinning "Space Tags" cloud on the sidebar. I want to create one more just for these Twitters so that we can group these great people and organizations to follow. Call it their "Twitter-type"
What if you mix two fun things like space and LOLcats? You get LOLspace, the space LOLcats. If fellow space tweeps don't mind, I will start posting here my new and classic LOLspace, like this.
Ever since a young age, I've been interested in space. Just recently, however, I started practicing as an amateur astronomer. In 2007, I started the Visual Astronomy blog to share my experiences and to help me learn as an amateur astronomer. Recently, I've graduated with a Bachelor's of Engineering, Electrical, and may be going back to graduate school for the same. Eventually, I want to work at NASA, and if we go to Mars, I want to be a part of that!
1) Malcolm Gladwell - The Tipping Point, How Little Things Make a Big Difference. Basically this one is about how fads and trends get started. It discusses how the right people come together with an idea and make it happen. Very interesting discussion on society, why we like what we like, and how some things make it while others don't.
2) Chris Mooney - Unscientific America. This one discusses science communication and how to get science information from the experts to the general public. It talks about how everything from politicians to the media are failing to take science seriously and address it in the manner it deserves. (Case in point - CNN getting rid of their science department!)
I had an experience the last week or so that once again made me glad I follow space on Twitter.
It all started with this photo[1] posted to Twitter via Discovery Channel blogs on June 12th by our fellow Space Tweep @astroengine. The photo showed a volcanic plume from Sarychev Peak in the Russian Kuril Islands on the Pacific Rim. An Astronaut on the International Space Station captured a stream of images taken in time-lapse of the eruption which was made into an animation, now available on YouTube[2], and the results are pretty incredible.
I recently heard
an amazing statistic that said seventy percent of the people alive
today weren’t alive when man first landed on the moon. In the
forty-years since we set foot there and in the thirty-seven years since
we left for the overwhelming majority of humans one of mankind’s
greatest achievements is only a historical event and not one they
witnessed firsthand.
Recently Twitter has been making headlines in crazy ways. It’s aiding people in Iran to get their stories out after the election.
Pretty amazing, if you stop to think about it. NASA Ames has just released a social media policy, as has the Mission Operations Directorate at JSC.
Twitter is changing how we communicate faster and faster every day.
Who would have thought that a simple question – What are you doing –
could have erupted into a communications phenomena?
So this is my
first post as an author on this blog (and indeed, any blog other than
my own), so given that everyone here likes to twitter about space, I
thought that might be rather a good discussion to kick off with! I must
admit, I was a bit skeptical of Twitter at first, but it’s steadily
growing into a very useful platform for sharing information, catching
news headlines and swapping factoids with other scientists and
enthusiasts. The question is, where might this be heading? And are
there more ways to use it?
I’ve really had
a lot of fun among you all, especially during our launch parties – with
more to come. Like probably most of you I didn’t understand Twitter
during its early development. Twittering sounded just too superficial,
but curiosity got the best of me and within a day, I bumped into this
joyful – inquisitive – and thought-productive group.
This will
probably be one of my very few blog posts here, at least for a little
while. I just wanted to tell my story…I’ve been trying to help out,
moderating and the like, but reading everyone else’s stories…it’s hard
to just sit back and not participate.
I joined Twitter in December of 2007 hoping to score a Nintendo Wii
via mobile alerts. I did, and didn’t pay much more attention to it
until Hurricane Ike in September 2008. I posted updates of my
evacuation plans to all of my 2 or 3 followers, and didn’t visit again
until STS-119. For some reason I got a wild hair and thought people
might be interested in what I do, so during that mission I posted
updates.
As the stars
once shared their chemical properties to create life so does this
cluster of Twitter stars share their collective knowledge, resources,
insights, thoughts and wonders to enliven our minds and inspire us to
think beyond our global boundaries. What I have found in following
these enthusiasts is that they not only share a love for space, they
love to share. This sharing contributes to an access of information
that rivals university astronomy and/or physics courses.
As a science fictionwriter, I’ve been appalled at the number of genre works in which the science disappeared after the first chapter, or the world-building defied my ability to suspend disbelief. While I’m not an astronomer, it stands to reason that there are some things that just wouldn’t be the same on, say, a high or low gravity world.
I left the
Aerospace industry in the seventies. I was an Apollo propellent systems
chemist with a specialization in hypergolics.
When Apollo 18, 19 and 20 were cancelled, many of us found ourselves
without a job, and with the Shuttle years away, many of us were without
a career as well.
Many decades and many, many miles later I signed on to twitter and
found a wonderful group of active members, workers and enthusiasts in
the spaceflight community.
Through your tweets and blogs, I feel connected once again to the
love of my life, the dreams of my youth, when a few of us answered John
F. Kennedy’s clarion call to reach for the moon and the stars.
How has Twitter
affected my enthusiasm for Space? That is a really good question,
especially for those of us who thought we couldn’t be any more
enthusiastic.
Space. The Final
Frontier. That’s what they said on TV. When I was a kid one thing that
truly grabbed my imagination was Space. I was always one of the geeky
kids who was into science and all that mad stuff. The Space Shuttle is
one of those things that has always been ‘around’ since I was a kid. I
grew up watching Shuttle missions, I remember the very sad days of the
Challenger and Columbia disasters, watching the newsreel on the BBC in
shocked silence and wondering if this would be the end of the Space
Shuttle program. I even remember writing Space Shuttle story (with
illustrations!) in class when I was only 11 years old.
I used to turn
my nose up at Twitter. I did not understand it. I was a loyal
Facebooker. Then came space shuttle mission STS-125, the final mission
to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
Over at Twitter, I began to follow all sorts of Space Twitterers and
was inspired and sold on Twitter forever. It made my already exhaustive
following of missions all the more complete. I have since deactivated
my Facebook account.
I have always been an advocate of NASA, human spaceflight and space
in general. I have had launch parties going on 10+ years and followed
every mission across all international agencies since I was a child. I
make mission patches for my Urban Garden for crying out loud!
It has been
great to get to know people from around the country who are passionate
about space. I have always been enthusiastic, but Twitter has helped me
feel more comfortable in expressing my enthusiasm and not feeling weird
about it.
Thanks for making the blog, the society, and bringing us all together!
As an avid space fan I love the fact that I can open Twitter & quickly find out everything that’s happened daily with upcoming launches, missions in progress & critical issues that effect future missions. Posts from NASA insiders & other space or science community members make me feel as if I’m part of what’s going on instead of reading about it in the news after the fact. Even though I have always been a big fan of space exploration my knowledge of what’s going on with it has never been as up to the minute as it is now that I have Twitter.
**I’ve made this post a sticky post so it will stay at the top for a few days until everyone gets a chance to read it.**
So, we’ve amassed a nice community of Space Twitterers, or Tweeps, and now we even have a blog. But we need writers. That’s where you come in. Get yourself a WordPress username by going to the wordpress link in the sidebar, if you don’t already have one. Then DM me ( @flyingjenny ) the email address that you used to sign up or comment here including your email address in the form and I can add you as an author. Your email address will not be published. I’d like to have as many participants as possible so there is always something interesting to read here.
