Steven Swanson, an American astronaut, has become the first person to post an Instagram photo of himself while in space. The 53-year old space traveler posed for the picture while traveling aboard the International Space Station. In the background, the Earth can be seen outside the large observation bay windows.
Instagram is the latest fashion in social media, and is starting to challenge Twitter and Facebook for users.
Pictures of astronauts and cosmonauts have, naturally, been posted to the photo site before now. But, this marks the first time an upload was made directly to Instgram by a space traveler. Although some people are referring to this image as a "selfie," it does not technically fit the term - Swanson had a fellow crew member take the picture.
"Back on ISS, life is good. - Swanny," wrote the astronaut on the Instagram page for the International Space Station.
Swanson began uploading photos to the ISS Instagram page during pre-flight training.
Six space travelers are currently aboard the space station. The astronaut from Colorado arrived at the station with cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev on March 28. This is the second voyage to the International Space Station for Skvortsov, and the first trip to space for the 43-year old Artemyev.
Commander Koichi Wakata is the first person to ever try electrical stimulation as a means of fighting muscle loss in space. Mikhail Tyurin is running medical experiments aboard the space station, examining the behavior of microbes in blood and saliva samples from the space travelers.
Swanson is an engineer, and a graduate of Texas A&M University, University of Colorado Boulder and Florida Atlantic University.
NASA announced it will end cooperation with Russia on most projects, although managers stated cooperation would continue on space station activities. This decision is opposed by many American astronauts, and the Russian space agency recently announced it would not suspend operations with NASA.
"We are in no way raising the question or trying to develop a response [to NASA's sanctions] because we don't see any grounds for it," Denis Lyskov, deputy head of Roscosmos, said.
The American space agency pays the Russian government $70 million a seat to carry astronauts to the space station. There has been no American craft capable of bringing humans to space since the Space Shuttles were retired in 2011.
One of the latest trends on Instagram has been to post photos of delicious-looking meals with the hashtag #foodporn. Maybe #spaceface is coming soon.
