The 30-year space shuttle program, which comes to a close this summer, launched its penultimate mission today. Endeavour lifted off this morning on a course to the International Space Station, where it will deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a $2 billion particle detector designed to search for evidence of "dark matter."
In order to drum up publicity for NASA's downsized space programs, Captain Mark E. Kelly of the Navy will be live-tweeting the entire mission from the Twitter handle @KillerKelly. While NASA has been live-tweeting shuttle launches from the Twitter handle @NASAKennedy for a few years now, this will be the first live-tweet from within the mission. See below Captain Kelly's tweets up until now:
KillerKelly Mark E. Kelly
Holy zero gravity, Batman!
33 minutes ago
KillerKelly Mark E. Kelly
Houston, we have a problem...haha, just playin
45 minutes ago
KillerKelly Mark E. Kelly
@CharlieSheen haha, seriously!
1 hour ago
KillerKelly Mark E. Kelly
I still think Kingda Ka's way scarier.
2 hours ago
KillerKelly Mark E. Kelly
Look, ma, no hands...
2 hours ago
KillerKelly Mark E. Kelly
I swear this oxygen is vanilla and lavender-scented.
3 hours ago
KillerKelly Mark E. Kelly
I'm on a space shuttle; I'm on a space shuttle. Take a good, hard look at the motherfucking space shuttle.
4 hours ago
KillerKelly Mark E. Kelly
Damn, I shouldn't have pre-gamed.
4 hours ago
Click here to follow Captain Kelly's live tweets or click here to follow NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
Originally featured in the Daily Pygmy.