Amazing Photos From Space – On Twitter Only
Love how sunset turns the mountains blue. #YearInSpace pic.twitter.com/wkoMdQRFvF
— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) December 13, 2015
Keith’s note: There is no mention of this amazing photo (or many other stunning photos) to be found at this NASA.gov ISS gallery page or at Scott Kelly’s Flickr, NASA2Explore Flickr, NASA_JSC_Photo Flickr, NASA Earth Observatory Flickr, etc. No higher resolution version, no mention of what part of Earth’s surface is shown, when it was taken, etc. To be certain having crew members tweet things from orbit to 13.5 million people is great – but so many chances to vastly enhance this reach are missed every day.
Yes, I am complaining about the way NASA sends pictures from space (more or less directly) to my iPhone many times a day. NASA could be spreading this magic elsewhere so very easily.
Right with you, Keith. “#yearinspace” has so many great images, but not available in what clearly was a much higher original resolution. And more importantly, hardly ever any mention of what is shown in the photo! You can find lots of followup tweets from people asking about the content, and it is very rare for anyone from NASA to follow up with answers.
Given 9 months in space, amazingly little imagery of the subject Astro Kelly undergoing the standard medical tests. I think NASA has lost its way when it comes to communicating what they’re doing-major fail on communications on the current mission.
I’m fairly into space science and space policy, and I’d be hard pressed to tell you what is going on aboard ISS these days. I usually have a sense of when a crew is going up or down, but other than pretty pictures what are the big questions ISS is being used to study? Whether pure science, microgravity exploitation, or human factors / life support / etc for long-duration missions, I couldn’t tell you. True I’ve always been more into the unmanned planetary probes, but if it’s easy for someone like _me_ to forget about ISS….
Maybe its just me and the media outlets I pay attention to, but I don’t think any of the major media pays much attention to ISS anymore. I saw virtually nothing about the landing of the Soyuz/expedition crew the other day-a small blurb appeared on page 2 or 3 of the hometown paper a couple days after the landing-not exactly news anymore.
Its curious that for the last couple months, since the Martian movie, I have a seen a lot come out pertaining to Orion. Why? That thing doesn’t fly for several years. What’s the news that can’t wait?
From what I have seen for several years now, NASA tries to focus its resources on social media which to me seems to be a poor way to ensure reach. Back when Shuttle was flying there were press kits, announcements of major new elements and payloads on ISS, NASA used to do a series of interesting facts about the Station-how much it weighed, how much power it used, how many ounces of urine the astronauts drank, etc. I’ve not seen one of those in years. I think NASA has lost its way; if the NASA press office cannot coordinate information output, then no reason to think the media would be on top of it. And what people get in their twitter feed or on Facebook is pretty sporadic.
I think it is just happenstance if you got an image like this one on your feed, or not. If NASA is looking for public support this is certainly not the way to get it.
guys, every photo tweeted is available as high res. check it: https://pbs.twimg.com/media…
How did you do that?
Click on the image in the feed, which oddly enough shrinks it slightly on my browser, then right-click, and “view image”.
(And it’s in Kazakhstan according to responses.)
You mean send the original pic to the ground, then have someone on the ground (perhaps in PAO!) actually post the high-resolution version somewhere obvious? Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?
I hate it when someone says “look at this awesome picture”, and they shove their phone in my face, so I’m stuck looking at a low resolution version of what would otherwise actually be an “awesome picture”.
I don’t think NASA should waste resources on such a trivial thing.
I imagine NASA and its astronauts have gobs of pictures like these. In our digital age there is no limit. I’d argue twitter is the more beneficial option for sharing this info. Getting awesome pics right into your phone’s feed is awesome and incredible and maybe one of the best things to share the amazing abilities and benefits of the NASA program. I don’t think it gets much easier than this to spread the “NASA magic”. I say keep the gates open for astronauts to share more frequently rather than add levels of data sharing/saving requirements on them so as to discourage them from sharing more.