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NASA’s out-of-this-world offer

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Mike Massimino tweeted details of his May 2009 mission to help repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA.

Don’t fret if your sub-par high school grades detoured your childhood aspiration of becoming an astronaut. You can live vicariously through NASA astronaut Mike Massimino by following his Twitter account @Astro_Mike. Massimino, who has garnered more than 1 million followers, is the first astronaut to tweet from space. He tweeted details of his adventures in orbit during the final space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope in May.

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Back on Earth (when he isn’t working or jet-setting around the country), Massimino is adjusting to the normalcy of the mundane -- sort of. While walking his dog in August, he gazed up at the stars and thought, ‘can’t believe I was actually there 3 months ago.’

And last month when he noticed that his house needed a new roof he tweeted, ‘hopefully this earth based problem will be easier to fix than the hubble.’

If Massimino’s lifestyle whets your un-Earthly cravings, NASA has a promotion that will blow you away. The space agency will allow some of its Twitter followers to witness first-hand a space shuttle launch at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 11 and 12. The first 100 people who sign up will be accommodated and an additional 50 registrants will be added to a wait list. Registration opens Friday at 9 a.m. For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup.

And all astronauts on Twitter can be found at http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Astronauts.

-- Melissa Rohlin

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