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If the Phoenix Lander comes back to life on Mars, Twitter users could be among the first to know.
NASA gave the historic Space Age mission an Internet Age spin by adding a Twitter page, enabling the robotic interplanetary explorer to answer the hot micro-blogging website's trademark query: "What are you doing?"
When NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory News Services manager Veronica McGregor was tasked with delivering word of the agency's first-ever robotic landing on Mars during a holiday weekend, she turned to the social-networking website.
"The fact that Twitter could send messages right to people's cell phones — it seemed like a good idea to let people know about the landing, " said McGregor.
So McGregor created a plucky persona for the 420-million-dollar robot and planted a flag on a new NASA frontier: Twitter-verse.
"I dig Mars!" was among Lander Tweets. Blog posts after its unprecedented May touch-down included an ice-discovery message ending with "w00t!!! Best day ever!!"
Tweets at twitter.com/MarsPhoenix won numerous Internet awards and garnered nearly 40,000 dedicated followers — 2,000 of whom joined after NASA lost contact with the Lander in November.
NASA has begun setting up Twitter accounts for other missions in hopes of repeating their success. McGregor said she is giving presentations throughout NASA on her successful experiment while pressing the agency to explore new communications strategies. ■AFP
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