William Shatner is about to get a virtual beam to the final frontier.
The Star Trek actor is set to participate in a Feb. 7 conference call with Canadian astronaut Cmdr. Chris Hadfield, who has been living on the International Space Station since December.
Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen will host the event, which will be shown online in a live webcast from CSA headquarters, located near Montreal, Quebec, at 10:30am ET.
“The conversation will take place in front of an audience of ‘space tweeps’ gathered at the CSA for scientific presentations and demos,” the CSA said on its website. “Tweeps will have the chance to ask questions in real-time to Hadfield.”
Hadfield, who will become the first Canadian to command the International Space Station in mid-March, has been getting attention for his social media presence since he arrived on the space station.
His cool factor has risen with each tweet and high-resolution photo, showing the earth in exquisite detail while orbiting from hundreds of miles above the earth’s surface. He’s even found time to perform a song with the Barenaked Ladies’ Ed Robertson, which is set to make its radio debut on Friday.
But it was a Twitter exchange with Capt. Kirk himself last month that made the Internet collectively squee.
Shatner initially opened up the conversation, and Hadfield used his best Star Trek knowledge to answer Shatner’s question: “Are you tweeting from space?”
“Yes, Standard Orbit, Captain. And we’re detecting signs of life on the surface,” Hadfield replied.
The CSA later got involved in the conversation and invited Shatner to chat with Hadfield at CSA headquarters, but Shatner wasn’t able to give a direct answer at the time.
“I can’t make any promises but I will see what I can do,” Shatner tweeted after learning that Hadfield will be in space until May.
Now that Shatner is on board, Trekkies and “space tweeps” will have something new to geek over.
Photo via @Cmdr_Hadfield/Twitter