The Tweet From Outer Space

On Friday Timothy Creamer, an Astronaut on board the International Space Station (I.S.S.), send the first live tweet from space. It was one small tweet for man, one giant tweet for mankind.

Mr. Creamer, whose Twitter name is Astro_TJ, wrote: “Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station — the 1st live tweet from Space! More soon, send your ?s.”

Tweeting from space is no easy task. In an interview last year with Mark Harris of CNET, the I.S.S.’s IT staff explained the logistics and hardware involved in connecting to the Internet 250 miles above the earth, while traveling at 17,300 mph.

According to the IT staff, the space station is equipped with 68 IBM ThinkPad A31 laptops and 32 Lenovo ThinkPad T61p devices. The laptops are all connected via Wi-Fi access points, and “there’s also a dedicated IP phone for phone calls and some limited video-conferencing abilities if astronauts need to see their families.”

The Internet connection is also relatively speedy. The Astronauts have connections speeds as high as 3Mbps up and 10Mbps down, which is comparable to most home DSL connections.