Astronaut is first to specifically contribute to Wikipedia from space
For the first time, content specifically for Wikipedia has been made in space, aboard the International Space Station. Andy Mabbett explains how this came to happen.
Astronaut Paolo Nespoli recently recorded his spoken voice for use on his Wikipedia article—a small step for him, but a giant leap for the Wikimedia movement. This milestone is the first time content has been made in space specifically for Wikipedia.
Paolo, a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut, made the recording while orbiting Earth aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for the Italian Space Agency mission VITA.
How did an astronaut contribute to Wikipedia while traveling through space at an average speed of 27,724 kilometres per hour (17,227 mph)? That involves the collaborative handiwork of several people back here on Earth.
In July this year, I approached Marco Trovatello (User:mtrova), Communication Officer with ESA's European Astronaut Centre, after seeing his excellent efforts to have ESA media released under open licence. I asked him to work with me on a recording made on the ISS. Marco jumped at the idea, and immediately agreed to help. As you can imagine, astronauts have busy schedules, but Marco was able to make all the necessary arrangements, working with his ESA colleagues to get the recording scheduled and the files transferred back to Earth (two of them: one in English, the other in Paolo's native Italian). He then uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons, where they are now available for anyone to use, freely, under an open licence (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO), as well as being used on Wikipedia and Wikidata.
