Commander Douglas Wheelock became the first person to use a location-based service in space. Wheelock checked in on Foursquare, from the international space station while orbiting roughly 200 miles above the earth. But the extra-terrestrial check in raised all sorts of questions on Foursquare’s website.
However posts like “How did the geolocation (spaceolocation?) work? GPS? WiFi triangulation to the shuttle? What?” and “Where exactly is he checking in if he’s orbiting the earth at 18,000 miles and hour?” went unanswered.
Still, Wheelock is the first person to unlock Foursquare’s new NASA explorer badge. Sure he already has a real spacesuit, command of his very own space station and he gets to ride in a real rocket ship, but I’m sure that Foursquare badge is pretty cool too.
Wheelock also tweeted about the experience. So I guess this make Wheelock the ‘mayor’ of space. But I’ve got to wonder how Neil Armstrong and Fyodor Yurchikhin feel about that?
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