It's the third week of August and already some of my friends on Facebook are talking about their kids going back to school. It struck me as  weird because I don't have my summer vacation until next next week. My kids start school the following week. Seems those times of school starting after Labor Day (3 weeks away) are long gone.

Here at Space Telescope, August has been a month for getting back to work with Hubble. Servicing Mission Observatory Verification (SMOV) has been progressing all summer long with very good results. We even got a bonus: NICMOS is back to cool!

On May 13, 2009, the space shuttle Atlantis slowly approached the Hubble Space Telescope. Hundreds of my colleagues and I were packed into the auditorium at the Space Telescope Science Institute, watching the live feed on NASA TV. I was posting to twitter (I am @franksummers) and following the live feed of other folks' postings (called tweets) about NASA and Hubble.

During the rendezvous with Hubble, the tweet stream became a flood. More than one tweet per second flowed across my laptop screen. People were not just watching the event, they were enthralled by it. Post after post was filled with excitement and declared their newfound addiction to this unfolding real-time real-life drama.

Could it be that the Hubble Servicing Misison was the ultimate reality show?