NASA Astronaut Sends First Instagram From Space

NASA astronaut Steven Swanson made history with the first Instagram sent from space earlier this week when he published a selfie from the International Space Station (ISS).

Swanson, a member of ISS Expedition 39 from Steamboat Springs, Colo., arrived at the space station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft operated by the Russian space agency Roskosmos (RSA) in March. It's the NASA astronaut's third trip to space and he captioned his Instagram, 'Back on ISS, life is good.'

It has actually taken a surprisingly long time for an Instagram to be published from beyond the Earth's confines, though many photos taken in space by astronauts and satellites have of course been shared on the site by folks down on the ground.

NASA opened an Instagram account all the way back in November 2013, but apparently nobody thought to shoot a selfie or any other type of photo while up on the ISS and then publish it on the photo-sharing service.

Still, the NASA Instagram account was an instant hit, garnering about 50,000 followers within days of launching. NASA's first post was the iconic image of Earth rising from the lunar surface taken during the historic Apollo 11 mission to the Moon.

Swanson is a flight engineer of the three-man crew that will serve a planned six months aboard the ISS for Expeditions 39/40. His fellow crewmembers are Commander Aleksandr Skvortsov and Flight Engineer Oleg Artemyev of the RSA.

Also currently aboard the ISS are Expedition 38/39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japanese space agency JAXA, Flight Engineer Richard Mastracchio of NASA, and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin, a Russian cosmonaut.

Wakata and Mastracchio last month hosted a one-of-a-kind televised tour of the ISS which was broadcast live over two hours by the National Geographic Channel, with ground-based commentary from Soledad O'Brien and veteran space shuttle astronaut Mike Massimino.

Wakata, Mastracchio, and Tyurin are scheduled to depart the space station in May, at which point Expedition 40 will officially commence and Swanson will become mission commander. He, Skvortsov, and Artemyev are set to live and work on the ISS through September of this year.