Space

Mark Zuckerberg, ISS Astronauts To Have Real Time Chat Via Facebook Live

Sam D
First Posted: May 31, 2016 05:15 AM EDT

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive officer of Facebook, will connect live with three astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) on June 1 at 12:55 p.m. EDT. The event, which will see a live Earth-to-space call will reportedly be broadcast in real time on NASA's Facebook page.

Zuckerberg will be speaking to three of the astronauts who are a part of the current six member ISS crew on Expedition 47, namely Jeffrey (Jeff) Williams, Timothy (Tim) Kopra from NASA and Tim Peake from the European Space Agency. The questions addressed to the astronauts will be chosen from a list on NASA's Facebook page. You can ask a question, apart from watching the call, at https://www.facebook.com/nasa. The live video call session will go on for a duration of 20 minutes.

NASA's social media channels are popular with millions of people, and quite a bit of the interesting posts seen on them are courtesy of the crew members on ISS. NASA's main Twitter account, has more than 16 million followers. Recently, the space agency's Snapchat page was taken over by Tim Kopra to show what it feels like to live on the station. Apart from these, the organization also uses NASA TV to live-stream space events and interviews for viewing by earthlings.

In addition, to all the social media activity, there has been a lot going on aboard the ISS in the past few days. On Saturday May 28, the BEAM expandable space habitat attached to the station was finally inflated and pressurized successfully, following a failed first attempt. The expansion process was broadcast live by NASA. The ISS is the planet's leading space laboratory and provides a platform for technology development and carrying out space research, to take mankind a step closer to successful futuristic space missions and explorations beyond the low orbit area of Earth.

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