Today, NASA announced that “Astronauts aboard the International Space Station received a special software upgrade this week – personal access to the Internet and the World Wide Web via the ultimate wireless connection.”
Wait… this wasn’t in place already? A multi-nation multi-billion dollar project and there was no internet access until 2010? I guess rocket science really is hard work.
The first thing the Astronauts did was set up an official “NASA_Astronauts” Twitter account that you can read here. Now that should be an interesting set of tweets to follow!
It’s not all free and clear for them to surf anywhere they want to, though. “Astronauts will be subject to the same computer use guidelines as government employees on Earth. In addition to this new capability, the crew will continue to have official e-mail, Internet Protocol telephone and limited videoconferencing capabilities.” Also… “the crew will have remote access to the Internet via a ground computer [and be able to] view the desktop of the ground computer using an onboard laptop and interact remotely with their keyboard touchpad.”
I still think Astronaut productivity will fall off just a little bit for the next few months.
