When Astronauts tweet: @astro_ron's Pictures #fromspace or Why Geography is Fun

Astronaut Ron Garan @astro_ron is one of my favorite tweeters - That means he ranks way up there in the Top 5 tweeters I like to read when I look at my phone in the morning. 

Last year, Ron spent a few months on the International Space Station. In the process, he took hundreds of photographs #fromspace (a twitter search for this hashtag and #fragileoasis will amaze you). He often published his pics on twitter, asking "Where on Earth is this?", leaving his followers to test their geography skills. If you think you know your geography, I invite you to test your geographic mettle by perusing Ron's photos #fromspace. No more neat lines and labeled countries. No more predictable North is up - West is left orientation. Just snapshots of our Planet, rotating in its Inimitable Splendor.

With most of Ron's photos, I really wasn't sure what part of Earth I was looking at. I considered myself lucky if I could identify a coastline or mountain range. I aced geography in school. As an avid follower of @astro_ron, I correctly identified immediately just one geographic feature - a day time picture of Lake Victoria. I looked for that picture for this article, but no luck. If anyone has the URL to the Lake Victoria pic, please send it along.

Here is another one of Ron's pictures that I recognized immediately:

Here is another night time picture of several metropolitan cities that a lot of people on this Earth will swear up and down they can pick out on a Map. They'll look at this Actual Photograph and won't be able to locate those cities without a good amount of doubt and guesswork.

What fun!

~ Imagine Mars ~

One of the purposes of this blog is to showcase noteworthy news, achievements and aspirations of people other than trained astronauts in the areas of space flight, space tourism and space exploration.

Pamela Greyer is a teacher in Chicago. I first met Pam in June 2011; before that, I knew her on twitter as @TheNasaLady. We met at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, where I attended my first NASA tweetup. I will describe that life-changing event in a future post. This one is dedicated to Pamela and her students’ remarkable achievements.

The previous summer, Pam had worked with some of her teenage students on the “Imagine Mars” project. Students were challenged to think about and imagine the requirements and realities of establishing a Mars colony and maintaining a human presence on Mars. Pamela’s students worked on all the aspects of a Mars colony, from the basics of survival, sustainability, habitats, oxygen, food / water supply and waste disposal to a deeper understanding of conservation of resources, recycling and green technology. At the end of the project, something amazing happened: Students took the initiative; they wrote and performed a rap song entitled "Bye, Bye Earth" about Mars colonization and made this video:

About half way through the NASA JPL tweetup last June, tweetup organizers played this video for the attendees. The reaction was a joy to behold: Spontaneous cheering and applause that culminated in a standing ovation.

For anyone who has any doubts that we WILL go to Mars and establish colonies there, watch this video and you will reconsider.

For those of us who have no doubt, the questions isn’t if we will go, but when.