What if you could send a message while zooming around Earth at 17,500 miles per hour?

The First Email Sent from Space!

Astronauts become the coolest pen pals ever

Astronauts sent the very first email from space in 1991 while orbiting Earth!

Picture this: You're floating in space, zooming around Earth at 17,500 miles per hour, and you want to send a message home. What do you do? On May 3, 1991, astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis did something nobody had ever done before — they sent the first email from space!

The message traveled from the orbiting shuttle all the way down to Earth using a special computer system called AppleLink. Can you imagine? While floating weightlessly above our planet, astronaut Shannon Lucid and her crewmates typed out a historic message that zipped through space!

But here's the really cool part — this wasn't just showing off. Scientists realized that email could help astronauts communicate faster and easier than ever before. Before this, astronauts mostly talked through radios, and sometimes the connection was fuzzy or unavailable.

The Space Shuttle Atlantis was on an important mission studying the atmosphere and testing new equipment. But this email experiment changed everything! Today, astronauts on the International Space Station send emails, video chat with their families, and even post on social media — all from 250 miles above Earth!

💡 Today's astronauts on the Space Station can video call their families and even watch movies streamed from Earth — all thanks to that first space email!