NASA said today astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have received a special software upgrade that allows access to the Internet and the World Wide Web via the "ultimate wireless connection."

Expedition 22 Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer made first use of the new system Friday, when he posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account, @Astro-TJ, from the space station. Previous tweets from space had to be emailed to the ground where support personnel posted them to the astronaut's Twitter account.

The personal web access, called the Crew Support LAN, uses existing communication links to and from the station and gives astronauts the ability to browse and surf the web.

When the station is actively communicating with the ground using high-speed Ku-band communications, the crew will have remote access to the Internet via a ground computer. The crew will view the desktop of the ground computer using an onboard laptop and interact remotely with their keyboard touchpad.
 

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