Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Latino astronaut "tweets" from space

We recently received the following e-mail from NASA regarding Mexican-American astronaut Jose Hernandez:
NASA Astronaut Jose Hernandez to Tweet From Space

HOUSTON - NASA astronaut Jose Hernandez, set to fly aboard space shuttle Discovery on STS-128, is providing insights about his mission on Twitter in both English and Spanish. He is the agency's first bilingual Twitterer.

Hernandez, whose Twitter account is astro_jose, can be followed at:

http://www.twitter.com/astro_jose

Hernandez, who considers Stockton, Calif., his hometown, grew up in a migrant farming family, travelling each year between Mexico and California. He did not learn English until the age of 12.

It will be the first shuttle mission to feature two Latino astronauts. Danny Olivas, who also is of Mexican descent, is among Hernandez's six crewmates.

For Hernandez's complete biography, visit:

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/hernandez-jm.html

For more information about the STS-128 mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts128
Hernandez’ venture has even caught the attention of Mexican President Felipe Calderon who congratulated him and invited him to dinner at the presidential residence after returning to Earth.

The space shuttle Discovery docked with the International Space Station on Sunday where two astronauts from that vessel will return to Earth. The Discovery astronauts are scheduled for a spacewalk today in order to perform outside maintenance.

Image- CNN
Online Sources- E-mail message, AP, CBC

1 comment:

Laura-Whateverebay said...

How exciting! Thanks for sharing the links, this is excellent material for my kids. :)
What a great role model!