Twitter Conquers The Universe, With Help From NASATwitter Conquers The Universe, With Help From NASA

After conquering the Earth, Twitter is now colonizing space. NASA is using Twitter to communicate about its efforts. Among NASA's extensive social media initiatives: Astronaut Mike Massimino is Twittering training for his fifth and final space shuttle Atlantis mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. @Astro_Mike is a mission specialist and spacewalker for a mission scheduled to launch May 12.

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NASA itself has a Twitter feed -- @NASA, and an extensive social media presence, with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Ustream, and MySpace. You can subscribe to NASA audio and video podcasts on iTunes, and read blogs.

The most famous NASA Twitterer is the Mars Phoenix rover, which explored the surface of the Red Planet last year.

As a measure of how Twitter has exploded during that time: @MarsPhoenix was the 14th most popular Twitter in June, with 15,000 followers. The 14th most popular Twitterer today is actress Demi Moore, @mrskutcher, with 473,742 followers. @MarsPhoenix is now the 229th most popular account on Twitter, with 43,186 followers.

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