ZVYODZNY GORODOK /Moscow region/, July 11. /TASS/. The next crew of the International Space Station (ISS) plans to actively use social networks to inform the public about its work in space, Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky said.
"Blogs are becoming increasingly popular now. When I flew in 2013-2014, we practically kept no blogs, up to the point that it was not particularly approved officially. Now it is an urgent necessity, because the popularization of science, cosmonautics and communication with young people is part of our work. For me, the most understandable and asy network is Instagram, although we will try to allocate time for other networks as well," he said.
Randolph Bresnik likewise plans to share his impressions of his work aboard the ISS. "We use social media in America with NASA to help get out the message of all the great science and Earth observation and ways to inspire young people," he said. "In America and I think everywhere in the world it’s a medium that really works well for the young people to captivate their attention with pictures and videos and the emotion that goes with that moment that we’ve been able to capture. So, as the crew of ambassadors of the human race up in the space, if we can capture any of that, what we see and what we feel and share it with the people on the ground and they can feel that as well, then I think we’ve done our job well."
Paolo Nespoli noted that in 2010 he became the first European astronaut to use social media to communicate. "There was a little bit of doubt from the European space agency about this new method of communication, but after the mission they had to acknowledge that this was a good way to reach everybody," he said.
"So after that every European astronaut had been present on social media. Although we faced a problem that you’re in space and you make two tweets, which takes a whole two minutes, but when they are retweeted thousands of times, so the impression is that you’re only tweeting in space and not working, which is a little bit of a problem. I want to assure everybody that we are there to work, and we actually carry out our tasks on board. Our primary task is to maintain the station, make sure that we do scientific, technological and educational activities. And we use social media and take pictures in our free time, which is very nice."
Sergey Ryazansky, Randolph Bresnik and Paolo Nespoli will travel to the ISS on July 28 aboard the Soyuz-MS-05 spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The current ISS crew includes Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and US astronauts Jack Fischer and Peggy Whitson.