Andes, Chile #CHI , Bolivia, Titicaca Lake and Salar De Uyuni from #ISS pic.twitter.com/Xp6uc7otLJ
— Alexander Gerst (@Astro_Alex) June 13, 2014
The NASA and its European equivalent the ESA are high professionals in promoting their missions and do their very best to show the sciences and experiments astronauts like @Astro_Alex run during their stay on the ISS. In a podcast on BR2 journalist Stefan Geier, who had met Alexander Gerst, says: “Alexander simply is a “good guy”, young, handsome AND he can communicate.”. This might have been a decisive factor in the selection process – about 8.000 people had applied for the flight to the ISS. “Because manned spaceflight … lives of its image, its fascination. And Alexander Gerst embodies this fascination perfectly”, Geier estimates.

Alexander Gerst attended the 63rd Lindau Meeting
©Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, Christian Flemming
“… the vast majority of their blog posts (90%) include a general discussion of the issue covered in the article, with more than one quarter providing health-related advice based on the article(s) covered. These factors suggest a genuine attempt to engage with a wider, non-academic audience.”This is, what most blogging and tweeting scientists also tell me themselves. They engage on one hand to discuss with other scientists, but for sure they often also do this to engage with the public. Also we, the Lindau blog team, want to interact with participants of this year’s meeting and with the broad audience all around the globe. Follow us, discuss with us (hashtag #lnlm14) also on Twitter and Facebook. Participants might even blog with us (contact). By the way: Do you know, also Nobel Laureates tweet and blog? I will tell you more the next days.