January 4, 2013

Capt Kirk, Canadian astronaut swap tweets... and prosper

"Star Trek" fans rejoiced Friday after Captain James Kirk of the starship Enterprise, or rather the actor who played him on the iconic sci-fi series, swapped tweets with a Canadian astronaut.

"@Cmdr_Hadfield Are you tweeting from space? MBB," William Shatner—who signs his Twitter messages with shorthand for "my best, Bill"—asked Chris Hadfield, mission specialist on the .

"@WilliamShatner Yes, Standard Orbit, Captain. And we're detecting signs of life on the surface," replied Hadfield, who arrived at the space station on December 21 for a five-month stint.

Hadfield was presumably referring to Earth, as he has been using Twitter to beam back compelling images of landscapes as diverse as the and snow-covered western Canadian cities.

The , situated just outside Shatner's hometown Montreal, got into the act as well, offering to arrange a live chat between the actor and the astronaut.

Star Trek fans meanwhile reveled at the exchange. "Looks like @WilliamShatner has opened a hailing frequency to the #ISS and @Cmdr_Hadfield answered! #cool," tweeted space and science blogger Jason Major.

(c) 2013 AFP

Citation: Capt Kirk, Canadian astronaut swap tweets... and prosper (2013, January 4) retrieved 10 June 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2013-01-capt-kirk-canadian-astronaut-swap.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

Explore further

Canadian to command space station in 2013
0 shares

Feedback to editors
Load comments (0)