When Neil Armstrong passed away last month at the age of 82, many of us took to the web to pay tribute to the accomplished astronaut.
Now, the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in New York, with the help of the Martin Agency, have launched a centralized Twitter tribute, One Small Tweet, to recreate Armstrong's journey to the moon on the microblog.
Here's how it works: Every time someone tweets with the hashtag #onesmalltweet, it's equivalent to 100 miles of the journey. The tweet is displayed on the website, OneSmallTweet.com, along with the additional mileage. As more tweets come in, the website tracks each message and moves closer from the Earth to the Moon -- a total distance of 238,900 miles.
At press time, 27,400 miles were traveled -- roughly 11% of the journey.
"We really wanted to echo Neil's words -- 'One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind' -- in our tribute," Neel Williams, senior copy writer at the Martin Agency, told Mashable. "With a lot of people doing one small thing, like sending a tweet, we can collectively move hundreds of thousands of miles through space and recreate this amazing accomplishment from Neil's life."
Here are some of the tweets people have sent so far:
Great tribute to Neil Armstrong - One tweet, 100 miles closer to the moon:goo.gl/QEg5h #onesmalltweet— Banguli (@Banguli) September 13, 2012
in the sky w/ diamondsgoo.gl/QEg5h #onesmalltweet— Mah Lemos (@mahlemos) September 13, 2012
Go further goo.gl/QEg5h #onesmalltweet— Yanina Copes (@ninacopes) September 13, 2012
To Infinityyyyy and beyond!!!!!! goo.gl/QEg5h #onesmalltweet— Jugal Patel (@Jugalpatel) September 13, 2012
What would you attempt if you could not fail? Neil Armstrong chose walking on the moon. #onesmalltweet onesmalltweet.com— Hank Thornhill (@HankThornhill) September 12, 2012
The end goal, Williams says, is to have Armstrong's family send the final tweet.
Back in 2009, the JFK Library and Museum launched an early Armstrong-related tribute, We Choose the Moon, an interactive recreation of the Apollo 11 journey, on its 50th anniversary of the landing.