ISS astronaut holds weekly geography quiz on Twitter
It's one thing to say you know your geography by identifying where a place is on a map, but could you recognize a location just from seeing a picture of it? What if the photo was taken from above from the International Space Station? If you're up to the challenge, it's time to start following US astronaut Scott Kelly of NASA on Twitter, where he's started a weekly game of asking people to identify what part of the world the space station is currently flying over, giving them only a photo and a single clue.
This was only the third week Kelly posted a challenge, tweeting a photo and clue on Wednesday, May 6th, and revealing the correct answer on Friday, May 8th. Kelly's game uses the hashtag #SpaceGeo, and the first person to reply to him with the correct answer will win a printed copy of that week's photo signed by the astronaut.
Round 2 #SpaceGeo. A: #LakeBaikal World's oldest, deepest lake created by continental rift. Congrats to @slang4201! pic.twitter.com/bAho6JnJSj
— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) May 1, 2015
Kelly's Twitter quizzes have so far been photos of Russia's Lake Baikal, the Earth's oldest and deepest freshwater lake, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the latest image of a brown landscape with a green river making its way across turned out to be Bighorn River, in the US.
Currently on a year-long mission aboard the ISS, Kelly hopes to keep the game going until he returns to Earth in March 2016. He is tasked with performing experiments that will help scientists study the effects longterm spaceflight has on the human body, but geography education seems to be important to him as well. In a statement from NASA, he says, "Expanding our geography knowledge is essential to our economic well-being, our relationships with other nations and the environment. It helps us make sense of our world and allows us to make connections between people and places."
SOURCE: NASA, Scott Kelly/Twitter