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Canada’s Chris Hadfield earns celebrity status from space tweets

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has been very active on Twitter since he arrived at the International Space Station, and it has earned him not only celebrity status but also a shot at winning a Shorty!

Commander Hadfield has gained some of his Internet notoriety from the incredible pictures he has been posting of his view from space — images of cities around the world, awesome views of mountains, deserts and coastlines, wildfires, and his own game of 'Where in the world do you think this is?'

It's the human factor, I think, that has really made him so popular, though. Aside from exchanging tweets with stars such as William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and George Takei, all of whom have solid Twitter presences, he regularly responds to questions from his followers:

He'll often tweet about life on the station,

The science experiments being conducted there:

And the science of the station and its orbit around the planet:

He even reported on a fire alarm from last night (fortunately a false alarm):

And retweeted the Canadian Space Agency post of a video link showing how astronauts train for such emergencies (starring Cmdr. Hadfield himself):

With all this fame so far, Hadfield has only been in space for three weeks of his six-month stay in orbit. He is scheduled to take charge of the ISS in March — becoming the first Canadian to be in command of the station — and he will return to Earth in May. With all that time to go in his mission, here's hoping he can keep up the momentum and continue to provide us with the spectacular views from space and the enjoyable insight into what it's like to live on the International Space Station.

If you'd like Chris Hadfield to win a Shorty award, click on this link and tweet your support!

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