NASA‘s storied space shuttle program may be history but ships are still making bold voyages into space — at least, in Lego form.
A Romanian man built a Lego space shuttle and sent it on a mission toward the stars. And the miniature craft nearly made it to space, reaching a reported maximum altitude of 35,000 meters, or about 21 miles. Its journey is documented in an amazing YouTube video.
“My name is Raul Oaida (from Romania) and this is my LEGO tribute to the end of the space shuttle era,” a YouTube user who goes by the handle “vinciverse” wrote in the video’s intro. The video was posted Friday and at time of writing had gained more than 81,000 views.
Oaida affixed the Lego shuttle to a helium-filled balloon with a GPS and video camera attached. After launch, he followed the Lego shuttle by land in a car until the would-be spaceship left GPS range. The shuttle eventually landed about 240 kilometers, or 150 miles, away from its original takeoff point in Germany.
Oaida is Romainian, but said in a blog post that his home country had too much bureaucratic red tape to make conducting the feat from there practical. So he traveled to Germany, where authorities were apparently more receptive, to launch the mission.
“I’ve always been profoundly inspired by spaceflight,” Oaida wrote, “the Lego Shuttle was the only space program I could afford.”
NASA’s space shuttle program ended after 30 years when the shuttle Atlantis concluded its final voyage last July. Luckily, with people like Oaida, its spirit of innovation and exploration lives on. Check out Oaida’s entire video, complete with emotive music, below.
The U.S. government has been engaging with social media, including YouTube, since 2009, when it signed Special Service Agreements with the major social networks to ensure compliance with federal terms and conditions. Also in 2009, YouTube unveiled its U.S. government video portal to showcase federal agency content.
Since that time, YouTube has played an increasingly important role in many federal agencies’ communications. While some agencies have experienced significant success using YouTube, others face challenges incorporating YouTube into their regular outreach efforts. Here are four federal agencies that are hitting their stride, along with a few helpful lessons.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has provided online video on its website for years. The use of YouTube and social media, however, is still relatively new for the agency — it’s been in the works for about a year and a half.
“There’s no debating that we’ve seen a tremendous increase in social media use,” says David Miller, director of corporate communications at the NOAA. “Clearly social media is in our communications arsenal and is going to continue to be.”
For an agency used to providing broadcast video to television networks, making the transition to YouTube isn’t necessarily a technical challenge, but like any organization, resources can be tight. As a federal agency, there are also compliance issues — such as closed captioning — to consider while prepping each video.
While NOAA wants to upload video in a timely manner, particularly in response to emergency situations such as Hurricane Irene, there are still logistical issues to overcome. For example, getting someone on a plane to the hurricane zone to videotape the situation can be challenging, as there are limited seats during these missions and many researchers with critical work to do. Still, Miller is optimistic that NOAA will upload current event videos more quickly over time.
NOAA currently has more than 800 subscribers to its YouTube channel, logging more than 80,000 views on 21 videos. The most popular clip — Scientists Discover and Image Explosive Deep-Ocean Volcano — received over 51,000 views. However, most videos average between a few hundred views to around 1,000. Links to NOAA’s multiple YouTube channels and social media accounts can be found on its website.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is using YouTube to reach the broadest audience possible, says Carol Crawford, chief of the CDC’s Electronic Media Branch.
One of the first government agencies to adopt YouTube, the CDC has been uploading videos to the network since April 2007. Under the channel CDCStreamingHealth, the agency offers videos on topics ranging from immunization, smoking, HIV and many other diseases that the agency works to control, prevent and cure. And to increase accessibility, some videos are available in Spanish.
“The process for picking and publishing a video topic can be very organic,” explains Crawford. “Educators and communicators across our very large organization come up with an idea when they see a need.”
The agency’s 200 videos have been viewed more than 4 million times.
“We are happy about that,” says Crawford. “We want people to have access to good health information around the clock. I like to think that our users can watch a video on vaccination or smoking on their phone or tablet while they are waiting at the doctor’s office.”
The agency’s most popular videos were about H1N1 flu during the 2009 outbreak. The videos were nothing fancy — just CDC experts talking on camera — but people were worried and were seeking credible information from the CDC. During the peak of the H1N1 pandemic, the agency turned around one video per day to meet the demand for updates.
Crawford emphasizes the need to be thoughtful about using web video and incorporating it into an overall communications plan.
“Look at your audience and make sure a video is the right way to communicate to them. Make sure you have a plan to promote your video to your audience. And be sure to go back and evaluate your efforts,” Crawford advises. “Short and sweet is best — people don’t tend to watch long videos.”
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) joined YouTube nearly three years ago. Over time, the agency’s members realized they needed to modify what they were doing.
After their initial efforts, the USGS decided to turn off comments on their YouTube channel.
“At the time, we didn’t have the ability to monitor those comments as well as we would have liked. At some point, we may open that up again, but we need to step back and address the best way for us to approach that before we do so,” explains Scott Horvath, web and social media chief at USGS.
At present, USGS staff uploads videos first to their website in a multimedia gallery, and then posts it on YouTube shortly after. Horvath sees two benefits to using YouTube — the ability to post HD quality video, and the ease of embedding YouTube videos into other sites and networks.
Right now, the USGS is more active on Facebook and even more so on Twitter, but Horvath doesn’t discount the importance of being on YouTube to make his agency more accessible to the public. One barrier, he says, is that it’s difficult to upload videos in a timely manner.
“We need to look at how we can integrate video creation and production into our existing process to better respond to emergencies,” Horvath says.
NASA’s YouTube presence is among the top channels viewed on the network. During the Hubble repair mission, the NASA YouTube channel was number one.
“That’s an impressive accomplishment when compared to the major networks and entertainment organizations that are a part of the YouTube community,” says Robert Jacobs, of NASA’s Office of Communications. “Communities like YouTube are too large to ignore. I believe you need to have a presence there, and it’s given NASA an opportunity to reach people who might otherwise not know about the agency’s activities.”
When the last space shuttle launched, NASA had more than three-quarters of a million people watching the event live on NASA.gov. But residing just on the NASA website isn’t enough anymore.
“We know that there’s an excited audience out there wanting access to the video on YouTube. We turn news events around in a matter of minutes, including the STS-135 launch video,” says Jacobs, “Success of your social media effort is measured now, in part, by how fast you can turn around the video.”
Another example of fast turnaround took place when the President called the four Atlantis astronauts of STS-135 during the final space shuttle mission and the six Expedition 28 residents of the International Space Station.
While Jacobs acknowledges that people get excited about the number of views videos get, he says he learns more about what people think from the comments and questions they post on the agency’s YouTube channels.
“The whole point of these communities is to be a part of the conversation,” says Jacobs. “If you just post a video and walk away you’re wasting your time.”
NASA has had its share of viral videos, including a video from a NASA-produced documentary with William Shatner about the recent retirement of the space shuttle that hit over 90,000 views.
Another popular video was an animation of a Black Hole eating a star. NASA also produced a series of videos with popular vlogger Hank Green around the theme that NASA “decreases the suck and increases the awesome.”
When Hurricane Irene was a breaking news story, Jacob says every science video and view of the storm from the space station was very popular, proving that timeliness matters.
“It is important to think of YouTube as a tool, not the tool. While it is important to be in this community, this is not a ‘one size fits all’ multimedia universe. Agencies should offer the same access on their own websites, etc.,” says Jacobs.
And it all should be integrated, he says. If you look at the NASA YouTube channel and @NASA on Twitter, the pages have the same look and feel as NASA.gov. The website also has a dedicated page to help users find all the agency’s social media offerings.
“NASA isn’t recognized as a leader in social media because some so-called expert or consultant told us what to do,” says Jacobs. “We’re a leader because we’re constantly looking for better ways to share our story… My job is not to market NASA. My job is to clean the windows so people get a better view and more access to their space program. They deserve it. After all, they pay for it.”
There are no more space shuttle launches to witness, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration seems to spend more time tracking things falling from the sky than launching them.
However, NASA is still busy boosting smaller, unmanned payloads into space, each of them tasked with studying some part of the galaxy or our own world. Now, NASA is inviting 150 of its Twitter followers to witness the United Launch Alliance Atlas V 541 rocket break the surly bonds of earth — and set off for Mars.
These Tweetups (there have been several, though the most notable ones were for shuttle launches — this author attended one) serve two purposes. First, they further build NASA’s social rep (its astronauts tweeting from space has been a huge hit. @Astro_Ron has more than 88,000 followers). Tweetups also help build a case for relevance as the agency shrinks, privatizes and outsources more of its operations and faces continued budgetary pressure.
The latest Mars rover — the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover — will lift off Nov. 25 on the Atlas V 541 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 10:21 a.m. ET. Once on the red planet, which Curiosity should reach around August 2012, the space laboratory will commence a two-year mission during which it studies Mars’s Gale crater to assess signs that life could have or once did exist on that part of the planet.
NASA will accept Tweetup applications starting on Oct. 5 at noon and closing on Oct. 7 at noon. The 150 participants are chosen at random. If selected, you get to spend two days visiting the Kennedy Space Center, meet and talk with NASA engineers and scientists, and hang with fellow tweeters and space enthusiasts, as well as NASA’s Social Team. Tweeting from the two-day event (Nov. 23-25) is, of course, encouraged.
The prize is a front-row seat for the Curiosity launch. NASA typically places Tweetup participants a mile or so away from the actual launch and, in the case of the shuttle launches, right next to the giant countdown clock at the Kennedy Space Center. Even at that distance, the launch view is spectacular and you hear the roar as space vehicle lifts off and feel the rumble of its rocket engine. It’s a bucket list moment.
You’ll find more details about the mission, this Tweetup and other Tweetup opportunities on NASA’s website.
NASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) weighs nearly 6.5 tons and it’s tumbling toward Earth faster than expected. However, the chance that some of the debris that survives the entrance into Earth’s atmosphere will actually hit someone are quite small.
NASA’s estimated human casualty risk following UARS’s re-entry is 1 in 3,200. But what does that number really mean? Orbital Debris and Meteoroid Consultant Don Kessler has an answer.
“The 1-in-3,200 probability has been interpreted by some as being ‘per person,’ rather than ‘per 7 billion people.’ That makes the chance of any one person having to worry about it to be less than 1 in 10 trillion,” Kessler told Space.com.
As far as time and place of UARS’s re-entry, NASA’s official UARS page says it’s expected during the afternoon of Sept. 23, Eastern Time. The post says the satellite will not be passing over North America during that period, but also points out that it’s still too early to predict the exact time and location of UARS’s re-entry.
NASA also warns against touching the debris from UARS if you happen to encounter any. Instead, you should contact a law enforcement official for assistance.
Although the risk of human casualty is very small, the story about the doomed satellite prompted some very amusing tweets. Below you’ll find our choice of some of the best tweets; if you’ve seen others worthy of inclusion here, please share them in the comments
Let’s face it — we all wanted to go to space camp when we were little. Here’s a list of people who probably did, and then forged careers from their obsessions with the final frontier.
Twitter provides a wealth of space information. NASA’s comprehensive Twitter presence tracks all of their space missions and astronauts. Physicists and space writers constantly pose theories on the future of space exploration. And space advocates get behind Congressional policy. So click the follow buttons to space out your Twitter feed!
Please let us know your favorite galactic tweeters in the comments below.
Another astronaut currently in space, Satoshi's tweets keep you on the edge of your seat: "It’s been the one got closest to ISS ever. The relative speed was 13km/second.If it hit ISS, it would have been a disaster with holes on ISS."
Physicist and thrill-seeker Garrett Lisi does motocross and gets "lifted to a hundred feet by a crane, and rappelled from the sixth floor window of a fire crisped building." Oh, and he also tweets about space.
NASA's official Asteroid Watch on Twitter tracks the celestial bodies as they near earth, and provides photos and videos of their paths across the sky.
On the same day NASA’s Endeavour Shuttle blasted off for the last time, the agency also launched a new way for us to find out about its many missions.
NASA’s new Slideshare Network, dubbed “The NASA Universe,” kicks off with a video that explains the history of the Endeavour Space Shuttle. Interviews with Endeavour’s crew, a timeline of shuttle launches and other interesting NASA documents are also available.
“Think of it as NASA curating some of the best content from NASA.gov,” explains Stephanie Schierholz, NASA’s social media manager.
Schierholz says that the channel is just one part of NASA’s expanding commitment to social media — which it has been ramping up during the past few years, as many of the journalists who traditionally covered the space (pun intended) have been laid off or given new assignments.
Since 2009, the agency has started more than 100 Twitter feeds, while maintaining multiple accounts on YouTube, Facebook and Flickr.
“Our strategy is to share what we’re doing as widely and broadly as possible,” Schierholz says.
Slideshare might not be the first platform that people think of when they think of social media reach, but the site does claim to have more than 50 million monthly unique visitors. Companies like IBM and Dell have also signed on to share their multi-format content on the site with the platform’s new branded network option.
Photo (Endeavour’s sixth launch on July 15, 2009) courtesy of Flickr, NASA
Alexander B. Howard (@digiphile) is the Government 2.0 Washington Correspondent for O’Reilly Media, where he reports on technology, open government and online civics. He’ll be reporting live from the upcoming Gov2.0 Expo in Washington, D.C., on May 25-27.
What is government 2.0? Tim O’Reilly describes it as government working as a platform. Others might describe it as applying the technologies that make up Web 2.0 to the practice of government, including blogs, wikis, social networking and crowdsourcing. The simplest way of describing government 2.0 may be any technology that helps citizens or agencies solve problems, either for individuals or the community, and enables government to operate more efficiently or effectively.
The following are five ways that the U.S. government is using social media to deliver services or engage citizens in making better policy.
1. Communicating Info About the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
The Environmental Protection Agency, however, has also used its existing social media muscle to communicate how it is monitoring and responding to potential public health and environmental concerns. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson shared news and her observations on Twitter as @LisaPJackson and on her FacebookFacebook page. The agency set up a website, deepwaterhorizonresponse.com, with a dedicated Twitter account at @Oil_Spill_2010 and on Facebook at Deepwater Horizon Response. Following the principles set out by the Obama administration’s Open Government Directive, the EPA is releasing oil spill data it collects from monitoring in open formats.
Emergency management agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (@FEMAinFocus) or state first responders like the Virginia Department of Emergency Management (@VDEM) are already on Twitter, sharing information during crises. Now, the National Weather Service is experimenting with getting information back from the online community. Government storm spotters are now searching for geolocated tweets that contain “significant” weather information. You can now submit storm reports to National Weather Service using Twitter. Just hashtag a geo-enabled tweet with #wxreport.
Although Twitter storm reporting is still an experimental effort, there’s evidence that the NWS believes this will be valuable, as indicated by their statement that “access to information from this widely used social media tool will help to enhance and increase timely and accurate online weather reporting and communication between the public and their local forecast offices.”
3. Helping Kids Get Up and Move
First Lady Michelle Obama has taken on the issue of childhood obesity with a “Let’s Move” campaign. Can the third of American youth be helped through social media? The Department of Agriculture is doing more than spreading information through its @USDAgov Twitter account or Facebook. The USDA is looking for innovative ideas for applications that could make a difference with childhood obesity with a web app contest – and they’ve put up $60,000 in prizes for the winners. The Official Rules require apps to use the USDA Nutrition Dataset available at www.cnpp.usda.gov/Innovations/DataSource.htm to ensure the educational quality of the games.
“This is about helping people have healthier lifestyles and more active lifestyles,” said Amanda Eamich (@Amandare), Director of New Media at the USDA. “The site is divided into two sections: apps and games. games are targeted at tweens, to help them have healthy eating habits. Apps are more for nutritional gatekeepers, which could be a parent, caretaker or anyone else interested. We want to develop games and apps that useful and relevant to people’s lives, not just what the government thinks you should learn.”
The competition, which has already attracted over 12,000 supporters, closes for developers to create nutrition-related apps on June 30. Members of the public will be able to join Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak in voting for the winners in July. Some fans already have ideas for how to take home top prize: “Make a tower defense game w/ calories as points & veggies as guns,” tweeted Anil Dash. “I bet you’ll get $10k + a trip to the @whitehouse.”
NASA has used Spacebook, an internal expert networking site for NASA employees, to enable staff to get to know one another in the immense agency. Spacebook helps improve teamwork, communication and access to information across NASA’s many projects and technology installations. “Using these tools lets you be sort of top-of-mind with a lot of these people so that when you need to call on them there’s already a connection,” said Emma Antunes (@eantunes), Web Manager for Goddard Space Flight Center, and the project manager responsible for developing the agency’s Inside NASA intranet and the Spacebook utility.
Antunes is now involved in a new project: an internal federal social network, known, for the moment, as FedSpace. As Antunes explained in a comment on Gartner analyst Andrea DiMaio’s post:
“FedSpace will be a professional collaboration space for Federal staff and contractors…many of whom don’t have access to secure, accessible, compliant collaboration tools to work across government. FedSpace will use the collaboration work/tools that some agencies have developed for internal purposes and fill gaps to provide these and other resources for interagency use. Intellipedia, Spacebook, Diplopedia, and other agency-specific internal spaces have proven to be highly valuable by increasing collaboration, nurturing innovation, increasing knowledge, and reducing redundancies. Similarly, there are many examples of how large-scale collaboration tools can and do work well internally in corporate settings. Jakob Niesen’s case study “Enterprise 2.0: Social Software on Intranets” cites industry leaders from IBM to Sprint who have found success in social intranets that were completely internal.
The potential benefit of combining the best ideas, processes, and lessons learned from more than two dozen Federal agencies in policy, human relations, software development, and subject-matter specific areas is immense, and optimizing the talent of the Federal workforce is critical to accelerating efficiencies and effectiveness in government. By working with our government colleagues (and for profit and nonprofit organizations) that have demonstrated value in hosting internal collaboration spaces, we expect FedSpace will help provide the tools and platform for quality collaboration across government.”
While the working name may not be ideal, given recent challenges at MySpace, the idea is ambitious. Will people get nervous when the FBI director follows them? Will a presidential poke mean you’re late for a meeting in the Oval Office? Jokes aside, the same potential for knowledge sharing and collaboration that other internal social networks have demonstrated could help the feds work better together.
5. San Francisco and the District of Columbia Team Up on Open 311
At first glance, standardizing the specification for the application programming interface (API) for Open 311 may seem like a minor technical detail. Adopting the 311 platform certainly doesn’t sound social, even if the announcement is made on a blog. But when the research and development group in the Office of the Chief Technology of the District of Columbia (@OctoLabs) tweeted, “Historic moment : ) SF+DC agreed on Open311 API v2.1 spec, implmnt. is underway,” it was a milestone for open government.
Why? Open 311 is a standard for citizens to communicate with their local governments. For instance, SeeClickFix integrates with Open 311 to communicate service requests directly into a city customer relationship management (CRM) system by reporting issues through the Web, widgets or smartphone applications. Citysourced is also using Open311. Now that D.C. and San Francisco have standardized on the API, developers across the nation can create applications that will work in any city that uses Open 311. That means citizens will be able to tell their governments what’s happening where they live, participating in improving their own communities.
Alexander B. Howard (@digiphile) is the Government 2.0 Washington Correspondent for O’Reilly Media, where he reports on technology, open government and online civics. He’ll be reporting live from the upcoming Gov2.0 Expo in Washington, D.C., on May 25-27.
What is government 2.0? Tim O’Reilly describes it as government working as a platform. Others might describe it as applying the technologies that make up Web 2.0 to the practice of government, including blogs, wikis, social networking and crowdsourcing. The simplest way of describing government 2.0 may be any technology that helps citizens or agencies solve problems, either for individuals or the community, and enables government to operate more efficiently or effectively.
The following are five ways that the U.S. government is using social media to deliver services or engage citizens in making better policy.
1. Communicating Info About the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
The Environmental Protection Agency, however, has also used its existing social media muscle to communicate how it is monitoring and responding to potential public health and environmental concerns. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson shared news and her observations on Twitter as @LisaPJackson and on her FacebookFacebook page. The agency set up a website, deepwaterhorizonresponse.com, with a dedicated Twitter account at @Oil_Spill_2010 and on Facebook at Deepwater Horizon Response. Following the principles set out by the Obama administration’s Open Government Directive, the EPA is releasing oil spill data it collects from monitoring in open formats.
Emergency management agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (@FEMAinFocus) or state first responders like the Virginia Department of Emergency Management (@VDEM) are already on Twitter, sharing information during crises. Now, the National Weather Service is experimenting with getting information back from the online community. Government storm spotters are now searching for geolocated tweets that contain “significant” weather information. You can now submit storm reports to National Weather Service using Twitter. Just hashtag a geo-enabled tweet with #wxreport.
Although Twitter storm reporting is still an experimental effort, there’s evidence that the NWS believes this will be valuable, as indicated by their statement that “access to information from this widely used social media tool will help to enhance and increase timely and accurate online weather reporting and communication between the public and their local forecast offices.”
3. Helping Kids Get Up and Move
First Lady Michelle Obama has taken on the issue of childhood obesity with a “Let’s Move” campaign. Can the third of American youth be helped through social media? The Department of Agriculture is doing more than spreading information through its @USDAgov Twitter account or Facebook. The USDA is looking for innovative ideas for applications that could make a difference with childhood obesity with a web app contest – and they’ve put up $60,000 in prizes for the winners. The Official Rules require apps to use the USDA Nutrition Dataset available at www.cnpp.usda.gov/Innovations/DataSource.htm to ensure the educational quality of the games.
“This is about helping people have healthier lifestyles and more active lifestyles,” said Amanda Eamich (@Amandare), Director of New Media at the USDA. “The site is divided into two sections: apps and games. games are targeted at tweens, to help them have healthy eating habits. Apps are more for nutritional gatekeepers, which could be a parent, caretaker or anyone else interested. We want to develop games and apps that useful and relevant to people’s lives, not just what the government thinks you should learn.”
The competition, which has already attracted over 12,000 supporters, closes for developers to create nutrition-related apps on June 30. Members of the public will be able to join Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak in voting for the winners in July. Some fans already have ideas for how to take home top prize: “Make a tower defense game w/ calories as points & veggies as guns,” tweeted Anil Dash. “I bet you’ll get $10k + a trip to the @whitehouse.”
HealthAppsForKids was featured as part of an “innovation showcase” during the recent Government Web Managers Conference in DC. Videovideo archive:
4. FedSpace: A Social Network for Federal Agencies
NASA has used Spacebook, an internal expert networking site for NASA employees, to enable staff to get to know one another in the immense agency. Spacebook helps improve teamwork, communication and access to information across NASA’s many projects and technology installations. “Using these tools lets you be sort of top-of-mind with a lot of these people so that when you need to call on them there’s already a connection,” said Emma Antunes (@eantunes), Web Manager for Goddard Space Flight Center, and the project manager responsible for developing the agency’s Inside NASA intranet and the Spacebook utility.
Antunes is now involved in a new project: an internal federal social network, known, for the moment, as FedSpace. As Antunes explained in a comment on Gartner analyst Andrea DiMaio’s post:
“FedSpace will be a professional collaboration space for Federal staff and contractors…many of whom don’t have access to secure, accessible, compliant collaboration tools to work across government. FedSpace will use the collaboration work/tools that some agencies have developed for internal purposes and fill gaps to provide these and other resources for interagency use. Intellipedia, Spacebook, Diplopedia, and other agency-specific internal spaces have proven to be highly valuable by increasing collaboration, nurturing innovation, increasing knowledge, and reducing redundancies. Similarly, there are many examples of how large-scale collaboration tools can and do work well internally in corporate settings. Jakob Niesen’s case study “Enterprise 2.0: Social Software on Intranets” cites industry leaders from IBM to Sprint who have found success in social intranets that were completely internal.
The potential benefit of combining the best ideas, processes, and lessons learned from more than two dozen Federal agencies in policy, human relations, software development, and subject-matter specific areas is immense, and optimizing the talent of the Federal workforce is critical to accelerating efficiencies and effectiveness in government. By working with our government colleagues (and for profit and nonprofit organizations) that have demonstrated value in hosting internal collaboration spaces, we expect FedSpace will help provide the tools and platform for quality collaboration across government.”
While the working name may not be ideal, given recent challenges at MySpace, the idea is ambitious. Will people get nervous when the FBI director follows them? Will a presidential poke mean you’re late for a meeting in the Oval Office? Jokes aside, the same potential for knowledge sharing and collaboration that other internal social networks have demonstrated could help the feds work better together.
5. San Francisco and the District of Columbia Team Up on Open 311
At first glance, standardizing the specification for the application programming interface (API) for Open 311 may seem like a minor technical detail. Adopting the 311 platform certainly doesn’t sound social, even if the announcement is made on a blog. But when the research and development group in the Office of the Chief Technology of the District of Columbia (@OctoLabs) tweeted, “Historic moment : ) SF+DC agreed on Open311 API v2.1 spec, implmnt. is underway,” it was a milestone for open government.
Why? Open 311 is a standard for citizens to communicate with their local governments. For instance, SeeClickFix integrates with Open 311 to communicate service requests directly into a city customer relationship management (CRM) system by reporting issues through the Web, widgets or smartphone applications. Citysourced is also using Open311. Now that D.C. and San Francisco have standardized on the API, developers across the nation can create applications that will work in any city that uses Open 311. That means citizens will be able to tell their governments what’s happening where they live, participating in improving their own communities.
Space — the final frontier, and all that jazz. As the folk over at the Hubble Telescope website say, “Your body may be trapped at your desk, but your imagination can roam the far reaches of the universe, thanks to the wonders of the web.”
Here’s a spaced-out selection of sites and social media resources that will have you reading the thoughts of astronauts, taking a virtual tour of the International Space Station, and viewing galaxies far, far away.
Get your space geek fix below, and, as always, please do share any resources we’ve overlooked in the comments box.
1. Mission Control: Space Agencies on the Web
There’s a ton of space agencies around the globe, together boasting an estimated $44 billion annual budget to find out more about space. While capabilities vary dramatically from country to country (not all have basic launch capability, let alone manned spaceflight, and the only two with lunar landing capability are NASA and the Russia’s CCCP), most are doing interesting work that can be perused online.
NASA dominates online as it does in space (which might have something to do with the fact that its funding is currently around $12 billion ahead of even the nearest agency), offering the best online experience. You could easily lose yourself in the official NASA site, which is highly recommended if you have a spare 36 hours or so to kill.
The official online destination for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, is painfully dry, but chock full of fascinating content if you can stand to stick around, while in contrast, the China National Space Administration site takes a more poetic approach to space exploration. At one point, they explain why the moon is liked by the people of Earth: “because of its thin brilliance that brings lovers with quiet warmth in the night, it is likened to a jade plate or a lovely and graceful woman.”
2. Online Observatories
It goes without saying that the Hubble Telescope’s official site is the go-to place for some amazing real-life space imagery. Thankfully, the official site offers a wealth of photography via galleries, most of which you can download for personal use as desktop wallpaper, etc. Better still, there’s plenty of info explaining what’s in the photos and why it matters. There’s also the option to see where the Hubble is at any time during its 97-minute sweeps around the Earth.
Elsewhere on the web, both GoogleGoogle and Microsoft offer a glimpse of our galaxy. Sky in Google Earth is a feature of the virtual world software that, at the click of a button, will show you the sky above your location with the option to navigate to certain points, or pan and scroll around to see stars, planets, constellations and more — as well as photos from the Hubble.
In addition to mapping the Earth and providing space data, Google offers 3D models of both the Moon and Mars. The features give you a glimpse at lunar landscapes and Apollo landing sites, as well as Martian points of interest like the so-called Face on Mars or Olympus Mons. If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, you can even have a brief chat with a local.
Microsoft’s real-time simulation of the company’s World Wide Telescope project is now integrated into BingBing search as a Bing Maps application. In addition to viewing celestial bodies in real-time as if you were to look up at the night sky, there are pre-loaded “collections” of constellations that can be viewed against Streetside (i.e. 3D photo) maps.
If you’d like to know what the innards of the International Space Station look like, you can take a 360-degree tour over at Boeing’s website. NASA offers something similar, but we found Boeing’s option easier to use.
You can also connect with U.S. Army Astronauts, and the 1,000-plus people that support them on Facebook. Across the pond, the European Space Agency’s fans number nearly 4,000 space lovers.
The ISS’s Facebook pages, meanwhile, will keep you updated with the goings-on at the cosmic outpost, while becoming a fan of the X PRIZE Foundation will connect you to all the gossip about the multi-million dollar race to the moon, and other endeavors.
Those with an eye to the future can beat the crowds by signing up to fan the James Webb Space Telescope on Facebook. As the successor to the Hubble, the super-duper, high-tech infrared telescope is due to launch in 2014, and the related Facebook Fan Page offers info on the project, as well as the option to comment on it and connect with others who share your interest.
If you want to stay in touch with space organizations and people on a more real-time basis, TwitterTwitter has a wealth of accounts that are worth following, including one for the aforementioned Webb Telescope.
As well as following the big agencies like NASA (which offers a useful list of who is in space right now), individual astronauts can followed for a more personal view.
Tip: If you want to cheat, you can just follow the NASA Astronauts account for more of an overview.
Twisst is great account that offers personalized alerts for when the International Space Station is passing over your geographical area — as it’s visible to the naked eye, it’s certainly worth keeping a look out for it.
Our favorite by far however, is the Twitter home for JPL’s Near Earth Object Office that coordinates NASA’s efforts to detect and track potentially hazardous asteroids and comets headed to, or near, Earth. Follow this account if you’re looking for a heads-up on the planet’s imminent doom.
4. Void-Filling Video
As in other areas, NASA really shines when it comes to online video resources. As well as offering exciting live-streamed launches, there’s a NASA TV area within the site’s main multimedia offerings, an official USTREAMustream channel, and over ten official YouTubeYouTube channels including the main one.
You can get your space fix elsewhere on YouTube with the official Hubble account and the European Space Agency. Another spot to watch for relevant content is the Science Channel.
5. An Astronomically Cool App
We run the risk of sounding like NASA cheerleaders here, but the free iPhone app the organization offers is a must-have for iPhone- and iPod touch-owning space geeks. It is, quite simply, mega. You can easily burn ten space-faring minutes at a time on categories like “Missions,” which includes detailed info about ongoing and recent operations, “Images,” with an Image of the Day that you can share via Twitter, Facebook Connect and e-mail, or “Videos” and “Updates,” the latter of which aggregates official feeds from Twitter into a timeline of interesting info. The only catch is that due to the wealth of info the app can access and its dynamic updates, you do need to be connected to use it. But when you are, it’s like having NASA in your pocket.
The U.S. government has been engaging with social media, including 
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Space — the final frontier, and all that jazz. As the folk over at the Hubble Telescope website say, “Your body may be trapped at your desk, but your imagination can roam the far reaches of the universe, thanks to the wonders of the web.”
