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NASA Celebrates Moon Landing, Twitter Followers and a Repaired Space Toilet
While Prez Obama was honoring the Apollo 11 crew in DC this morning on the 40th anniversary of the spaceship's lunar landing, the name Apollo 11 was rapidly becoming a Trending Topic on Twitter. We're sad to say that's not really a good thing as spammers have recently begun including Trending Topics and hashtags on their spam tweets so that they show up in Twitter searches. Oh the ups and downs of Twitter. Btw, have you heard of the hotel who took out a billboard ad to advertise their Twitter feed? Yeah. That's how insane Twitter is now.
Still, we looked to the all-knowing NASA Twitter page to see what they were tweeting about on one of their high holy days. And it turned out, today was a big day for NASA. Along with the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, NASA notched their 100,000th Twitter follower and they successfully completed a spacewalk to repair a toilet at the US Destiny Lab Space Station. Hurrah!
Meanwhile, hopeful space travel traveler, Virgin Galactic, is collecting songs for a playlist that will be played for passengers in space. Something tells us aspiring astronaut Lance Bass will want to be on both the Virgin Galactic launch and the playlist. VG: you can do better.
Join the travel twitter conversation, follow us here.
Related Stories:
· Guinness Giving Away a 2012 Space Trip on Virgin Galactic [Jaunted]
Tags: Moon Landing Anniversary / Apollo 11 / Space Travel / Space Tourism / NASA / → All Tags
Follow Along With Apollo 11's Lunar Landing, 40 Years Ago Today
Forty years ago today, you could look up into the night sky at the moon and know that way up there, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were hopping around and generally making history as the first men to walk on the moon. Now that it's been four decades since that seminal moment of "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" and no one has walked on the moon since 1972, it's about time we look back and reflect on the physical and technological feats that were accomplished to bring this about.
Sure, there are tons of events this week in celebration, and Louis Vuitton threw an astronaut party last week, but the real action is at home on your computer. It's called "We Choose The Moon," and it's a flash website that effectively re-broadcasts the transmissions between Houston Command and Apollo 11 throughout their mission. Along with browsing historical photographs, the site allows you to follow along with a livestream, three Twitter accounts (@AP11_CapCom, @AP11_Spacecraft, and @AP11_Eagle), and a route map that progresses in real time with the mission as it was fourty years ago.
There's a lot of technical phrases, but also quips from the astronauts about dealing with lack of gravity and passing time in outer space, and the best part is that they're the actual transmissions! Since today is the day for the lunar landing and moonwalk, tune in or install the desktop widget to experience history all over again—we recommend forwarding it to your parents and grandparents who watched the original event on TV in 1969.
Related Stories:
· We Choose The Moon [Official Site]
· Apollo 40 Years, Event Schedule [NASA]
· Where to Celebrate The 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing [Jaunted]
[Photo: National Air and Space Museum]
Tags: Apollo 11 / Moon Landing Anniversary / Space Travel / Space Tourism / → All Tags
One Small Step for Man, Lots of 40th Anniversary Celebrations for Mankind
The 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11's Landing on the Moon will happen on Monday, July 20, 2009 but the moon landing celebrations have already begun. We rounded up a few of them for you last week and HotelChatter's got the skinny on a moon landing hotel package at the Moon Rise Hotel but there are a few more moon events you might want to check out.
Kennedy Space Center
There will be a free concert at The Kennedy Center's Concert Hall on Saturday at 8pm.
Tickets are on a first-come, first-serve basis and will be extremely limited. Ticket distribution begins at 10am in the Hall of Nations until noon (or until all tickets have been given out.) But if you can snag a pair, you'll be treated to performances of Fanfare from 2001: A Space Odyseey and the theme songs from Lost in Space, Star Trek, Star Wars and E.T.
Virginia Living Museum
Folks near Newport News, Virgina can pop into the Virginia Living Museum this weekend for their "Astronaut" special at 11:30am and 12:30pm. This is a full-dome immersive experience that shows you what a rocket launch is like from inside the body of an astronaut. "Discover the perils that lurk in space as we subject Chad, our test astronaut, to everything that space has to throw at him." Also folks from NASA Langley will be on hand to talk about sending more humans to the moon and Mars. Each show is $4 plus museum admission.
