Astronaut's tweets out of this world

Twitter has boldly gone where no social media has gone before.

NASA astronaut Mike Massimino is the first person to tweet from space, taking his more than 255,000 followers from around the world with him on his mission from space shuttle Atlantis.

"From orbit: Getting more accustomed to living in space today and getting ready for our big rendezvous with hubble," Massimino tweeted about 10:30 a.m. Astronauts on this mission left Monday and will work for the next five days on making repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Because the astronauts don't have a direct Internet connection from space, Massimino e-mails his tweets to Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they directly post it to his Astro_Mike Twitter account, said NASA spokeswoman Nicole Cloutier.

He sent along his enthusiasm in his first out-of-Earth post: "From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!"

Massimino is going to tweet as time permits, Cloutier said.

"The pace on orbit is going to pick up, so we'll have just to stand by," she said.

Atlantis may have launched the first space tweeter, but NASA says it won't be the last.

For NASA's next shuttle launch, mission commander Mark Polansky will tweet from space shuttle Endeavor.

In the meantime, NASA wants folks to submit video questions to his Twitter account, Astro_127 (that stands for Space Transportation System 127, also known as Endeavor). Polansky will review the questions and answer them in a session from space. NASA-TV will also air the in-orbit Q&A session.

This is Massimino's second trip to Hubble and his second space flight. He performed two spacewalks to the telescope during the STS-109 mission in 2002.

You can follow Massimino at http://twitter.com/Astro_Mike. NASA is also tweeting Atlantis' movements at http://twitter.com/NASA.