Help for the Orbiting Astronaut

This is the kind of thing that shows just how weirdly connected we’ve all become.The other day Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi was up on the space station, downloading pictures via Twitter that he’d taken out the window. He asked if anybody could identify a weird hexagonal shape in Australia….

This is the kind of thing that shows just how weirdly connected we've all become.

The other day Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi was up on the space station, downloading pictures via Twitter that he'd taken out the window. He asked if anybody could identify a weird hexagonal shape in Australia. Within minutes he had his answer (along with lots of useless Twitter banter). It's the Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt, which uses an antenna array to transmit to ships and submarines. Thanks, scottmsg! Another Twitterer, kuri_kurita, helpfully provided a Google Earth close-up.

He might have gone one better, and linked to the Street View. From space to ground level, almost instantly—a wired world indeed.

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