Space and Social Media

I live in east Central Florida, barely a 35-minute drive to the coast and the hub of the Space program at Kennedy Space Center.  On May 27, was the first attempt for a joint venture between NASA and the private commercial company of Elon Musk's SpaceX, to send two astronauts to the International Space Station in a rocket largely designed by private industry.  

This launch has garnered international attention, with several websites with T minus the number of days before the launch.  As I was working, I was streaming space.com which had live feeds from multiple camera angles of the astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley getting suited up in the redesigned space suits that Elon Mush said to both "look good and work good."  

I decided to tweet the #LaunchAmerica tag for people to follow the story, and the liftoff time.  When I did, I thought I just and see where #LaunchAmerica was trending, and it was number 4.  When I tweeted a while later that the astronauts were riding in Elon Musk's Tesla cars to the launch site, as well as the website where viewers could stream the footage, I re-checked and then #LaunchAmerica was trending #1.

SpaceX and NASA are savvy users of social media, and were doing everything they could to get the word out.  Below is a screenshot of NASA live webpage where you can monitor real-time footage of the astronauts at the International Space Station, and a slew of social media links to share the site.

Check it out and share updates on the historic mission through your favorite social media tool!