Tweet to Earth: ‘Launch was awesome!!’

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - That's one small tweet for a man; one cool leap for communications.

Astronaut Mike Massimino has used Twitter to send the first tweet from space.

Checking in as Astro_Mike, he says "Launch was awesome!!" and reports he's feeling great and working hard.

Before Monday's liftoff of the space shuttle Atlantis to the Hubble Space Telescope, Massimino posted regular updates on his training to the micro-blogging site via a mobile device. Such updates, or "tweets," are limited to 140 characters.

On Tuesday, the 46-year-old from Long Island, N.Y., tweets that he's enjoying the magnificent views from space, adding "the adventure of a lifetime has begun!"

Unlike his pre-launch tweets, the updates from space are being sent from a computer onboard Atlantis. Then the message is passed along to Massimino's Twitter account by NASA. The space agency has also created Twitter accounts for many of its space missions, including a popular Twitter feed that was ghost-written for the Phoenix Mars Lander.

Massimino has said he'll send Twitter updates as time allows during his busy schedule in orbit. He's set to do two of the five spacewalks to repair and upgrade the telescope.

This report includes information from The Associated Press and msnbc.com.

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