Shuttle commander takes Twitter to orbit

Take that @stephenfry! You may have half the adult population of Earth following your tweets, but NASA is making a bid for the first extraterrestrial Twitterer.

Astronaut Mark Polansky, commander of the next space shuttle mission to the International Space Station in June, is sharing updates about his training and upcoming flight on Twitter.

You can follow his tweets @Astro_127, where you might find Polansky trying on a space suit, sipping some sweet tea or repeatedly crashing his shuttle in the simulator.

Geeks in space

To complete the Web 2.0 love-in, Polanksy is inviting followers to submit video questions via YouTube that he will answer from orbit, probably while updating Facebook on his iPhone.

To submit a question, you should post a 30-second video question to YouTube and tweet the link to Polansky's account. From now until the launch of STS-127, one or two of the questions submitted will be selected each week to be answered from orbit.

While Polansky is dicking about talking to teenagers on his space computer, crewmates Dave Wolf, Christopher Cassidy, Tom Marshburn and Tim Kopra will perform the mission's five spacewalks. Kopra will remain aboard the ISS after Endeavour departs, as a flight engineer for Expedition 20.

You can get more information about Polansky and his mission (STS-127), and view video questions that have been selected so far, at www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts127.