Abu Dhabi: With more than one million followers on Twitter, Canadian astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield has put the cool back in science and space flight, with a popularity usually reserved for celebrity entertainers on social media.
It’s all thanks to Colonel Hadfield sharing his experiences with social media users, taking pictures of space and earth, and then proceeding to post those pictures on social media channels like Twitter.
“Imagine if they didn’t broadcast the first moon landing, how different would it have been? Sharing the event is as important as the event itself for me, and because we televised the live moon landing, it made those two astronauts become world-renowned people.” said Colonel Hadfield as he delivered a lecture at the Mohammad Bin Zayed Majlis.
General Shaikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, also attended the lecture, held as part of series of lectures delivered at the Mohammad Bin Zayed Majlis during Ramadan.
“Sharing the experience on Twitter through pictures makes a lot of people become interested, and that’s why I have become popular on social media, it’s down to the work I do and put out there.”
Part of this sharing also included recording a song and singing it live from space along with one million children in schools, with the lyrics speaking about space exploration and discovery, all part of sharing the experience through art, according to Colonel Hadfield.
As a result of the sharing experience, more people have been visiting social media outlets such as Twitter over dedicated science websites set up by Nasa to explain space exploration, highlighting the use of social media as an effective way of garnering people’s interest and attention, he said.
Colonel Hadfield also touched upon the UAE’s own recently announced space project. “The UAE has a very good opportunity for space exploration, there is a very good vision, and the groundwork is there from what I have seen.”
Sami Zaatari is a trainee at Gulf News
