Astronaut Mike Massimino has the dubious honour of being the first person to Twitter from space, having taken time from the space shuttle Atlantis STS-125 mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to share this tweet with mankind:

From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!

In case you're concerned that Massimino (pictured) is hitting IM, Facebook and Twitter hard when he should be getting ready for the second mission spacewalk, which will see him and Michael T Good tackle the space 'scope's gyro assemblies, rest assured that his tweets are sent via email to Johnson Space Center, which then posts them for him.

Back on terra firma, another NASA astronaut has gone a-twittering: Mark Polansky, commander for the forthcoming Endeavour STS-127 mission to the International Space Station. ®

Bootnote

Since it's apparently inevitable that the whole universe will eventually fall to Twitter, here are are few future tweets our grandchildren might be reading:

Bowman_2001: Bad morning, HAL won't open pod bay doors. Bummer

Ripley@LV-426: just got our asses kicked!!!!! gonna take off and nuke the entire site from orbit!!! Wish us luck!!!!!

batty_boy: Had a coffee and watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. Like, wow...