The Associated Press reports:
On Twitter, messages of 140 characters may seem confining. Mike Massimino is finding a different type of space even more limiting -- outer space.
The astronaut is sending messages to the social networking site from 350 miles above Earth on the space shuttle Atlantis -- and what's cramping his "tweets" is time, not the character limit.Massimino, 46, averaged about four tweets a day before launch. Now that he's in orbit, it's down to one a day.
Still, Astro_Mike, which is Massimino's Twitter name, did make history.
He's the first person to tweet from space: "From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!"
There are 36 NASA Twitter accounts, including Massimino's. NASA also has 24 Facebook accounts, 13 YouTube channels, eight Flickr photo accounts and five MySpace sites.
More than 270,000 people have signed up to follow Massimino's tweets.
He tweeted Wednesday from orbit about chasing down Hubble: "From orbit: Getting more accustomed to living in space today and getting ready for our big rendezvous with Hubble."
And on Thursday, about grabbing Hubble the previous day: "From orbit: Rendezvous and grapple were great, getting ready for our first spacewalk."
The tweets may get more scarce. Massimino, 46, is spacewalking today and Sunday.
Astronaut Mark Polansky -- whose Twitter name is astro_127 -- also tweets, as does NASA, which also maintains a list of social media sites (such as Facebook) that it and its affiliates use.
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