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One small step for man, one giant leap for the internet? In what is easily the most interesting announcement to come out of NASA in the past few months, this report claims:

“NASA will be partnering with Deep Space and several of the most famous microblogging content providers in order to usher in a new era of communication and openness to the world - by having crew members aboard the International Space Station provide microblog updates on a daily basis.”

So apparently this includes Twitter, Facebook and MySpace at the least (as I suppose one can already derive from their ads) but it’s a pretty radical new concept. Astronauts blogging? Even with the limitations of 160 characters (as is the accepted limit of the microblog format), is it potentially the first real communication the public will be having with an astronaut? Or is it just a big publicity stunt? I mean, it is an intriguing test of the microblogging format. Until now, I’ve never been a user of Twitter or even really cared much for Facebook status updates. But if it’s coming from a guy in space, that’s a little different of a network than I’m used to.

I guess we’ll have to see.

POSTED ON FEBRUARY 2/2/2009 BY BRENDON FEDERER