Twitter is now among the stars… literally. The social media site landed on Mars at 1:30 a.m. on August 6 via the NASA-designed Curiosity Rover. The “tweeting truck” – as it was dubbed on Twitter – sent live tweets during its landing process. Pretty cool way to use social media, huh?

The Curiosity Rover’s official Twitter handle is @MarsCuriosity and now has over 687,000 followers. The tweeting truck also made history by sharing the first Twitpic of another planet. The Flight Director of the mission has even become an internet sensation in his own right thanks to a picture he Instagrammed of himself in the control room.

Not many other social media sites can say they have been to space, and this proves that this form of communication is being used in ways we never would have imagined before. As Twitter was ablaze with users expressing their amazement at the phenomenon, something else was also evident. Social media is steadily shaping and influencing the world we live in, and the only real question about its future is…

Where will it go next?