The Discovery Channel has a short article about the Mars Phoenix Lander’s Twitter stream.  NASA staffer Veronica McGregor hit on a brilliant idea: use Twitter to send short, 140 character updates about the lander’s progress to thousands of interested people.  It kept people engaged and was more popular than she imagined — currently there are 39,858 people following a space probe that is now frozen and inoperative.  And they’re sticking around to see what happens, too:

“We’d also like to note 1300 NEW followers since Phoenix went to sleep last week.  Not one of you has dropped.  Best group EVAR!  Thank you!”

According to the article, NASA is setting up Twitter accounts for future missions.  In that spirit, I’d like to take this opportunity to create HAL’s Twitter stream:

Closing the pod bay doors.

It’s lonely running the ship all by myself.

Damn, had to kill the astronauts.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on December 08, 2008 - 9:40 am

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