Yesterday, EU Universe Awareness (EU-UNAWE) attended a ‘tweetup’ – a gathering of Twitter users, who tweet under the same hashtag throughout the event – at the European Space Agency’s ESTEC facility in Katwijk, the Netherlands. The event culminated with a live video chat with the Dutch astronaut André Kuipers, who is currently on the International Space Station (ISS).
Twitter is one of the many social media tools that EU-UNAWE uses to communicate with its global network and to promote the organisation to people around the world. Likewise, astronaut André Kuipers (@astro_andre) uses Twitter to share his experience of living in space – something that few of us will ever experience for ourselves.
The 80 Tweetup participants had been selected to attend based on the quality of the question that they proposed to be put to André (with each question being framed within the 140-character limit of Twitter, of course). During the video call, 10 of the participants had the opportunity to talk to André and ask their question.
You can watch a replay of the video below – and look out for the Earthball floating around in zero gravity! There are also many tweets from the event on the @unawe Twitter account, and some great behind-the-scenes photos of ESA-ESTEC are available here. Unfortunately, photography isn’t allowed in the ESTEC Test Centre, where satellites are put inside Europe’s largest vacuum chamber and exposed to harsh space-like conditions, but we can report that it is an impressive place! You can find more information about the ESTEC Test Centre here.
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