A Shorty Award is seen Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA's official Twitter feed, @NASA, has won its second consecutive Shorty award for the best government use of social media. The Shorty Award honors the best of social media across sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, Foursquare and others. NASA took the prize Monday, April 8, at the fifth Shorty Awards ceremony in New York. The @NASA acceptance tweet was, "We're sharing the universe 1 tweet at a time. Be inspired! Follow @NASA & RT if you love science & space. #ShortyAwards." Photo Credit: (NASA/Carla Cioffi)

A Shorty Award is seen Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The award was presented to NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock for an image of the moon he took and posted to his Twitter account, @Astro_Wheels, while living aboard the International Space Station last year. The awards ceremony was held at the TimesCenter in New York City on Monday, March 28. Photo Credit: (NASA/Paul E. Alers)

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., was nominated for a 2013 Shorty award. This video offers just a small slice of what goes on at Goddard. <a href="http://shortyawards.com/nasagoddard" rel="nofollow">shortyawards.com/nasagoddard</a> Music: Title- Agent of Justice Damon Criswell, composer Published by Ocean Life Music Credit: NASA/Goddard <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagram.com/nasagoddard?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>

S61-00246 (25 July 1961) --- Photo of the original Mercury astronauts with Col. John A. (Shorty) Powers seated around a table talking to the news media. From left to right are: L. Gordon Cooper, Donald K. Slayton, John H. Glenn Jr., Col. Powers, Alan B. Shepard Jr., M. Scott Carpenter and Walter M. Schirra Jr. Virgil I. Grissom is out of the frame. Photo credit: NASA

AS17-137-20992 (12 Dec. 1972) --- A view looking into Shorty Crater, taken at Station 4, showing the orange soil. Astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt found the orange soil on the moon during the second Apollo 17 extravehicular activity (EVA) at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. While astronauts Eugene A. Cernan, commander, and Schmitt, lunar module pilot, descended in the Lunar Module (LM) "Challenger" to explore the Taurus-Littrow region of the moon, astronaut Ronald E. Evans, command module pilot, remained with the Command and Service Modules (CSM) "America" in lunar orbit.

AS17-137-20990 (12 Dec. 1972) --- A view of the area at Station 4 (Shorty Crater) showing the now highly-publicized orange soil which the Apollo 17 crew members found on the moon during the second Apollo 17 extravehicular activity (EVA) at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. The tripod-like object is the gnomon and photometric chart assembly which is used as a photographic reference to establish local vertical sun angle, scale and lunar color. The gnomon is one of the Apollo lunar geology hand tools. While astronauts Eugene A. Cernan, commander, and Harrison H. Schmitt, lunar module pilot, descended in the Lunar Module (LM) "Challenger" to explore the Taurus-Littrow region of the moon, astronaut Ronald E. Evans, command module pilot, remained with the Command and Service Modules (CSM) "America" in lunar orbit. Schmitt was the crew man who first spotted the orange soil.

AS17-137-20989 (12 Dec. 1972) --- A close-up view of the much-publicized orange soil which the Apollo 17 crewmen found at Station 4 (Shorty Crater) during the second Apollo 17 extravehicular activity (EVA) at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. The orange soil was first spotted by scientist-astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt. While astronauts Schmitt and Eugene A. Cernan descended in the Lunar Module (LM) "Challenger" to explore the lunar surface, astronaut Ronald E. Evans remained with the Apollo 17 Command and Service Modules (CSM) in lunar orbit. The orange soil was never seen by the crewmen of the other lunar landing missions - Apollo 11 (Sea of Tranquility); Apollo 12 (Ocean of Storms); Apollo 14 (Fra Mauro); Apollo 15 (Hadley-Apennines); and Apollo 16 (Descartes).

S72-56362 (27 Dec. 1972) --- Scientist-astronaut Harrison H. "Jack" Schmitt (facing camera), Apollo 17 lunar module pilot, was one of the first to look at the sample of "orange" soil which was brought back from the Taurus-Littrow landing site by the Apollo 17 crewmen. Schmitt discovered the material at Shorty Crater during the second Apollo 17 extravehicular activity (EVA). The "orange" sample, which was opened Wednesday, Dec. 27, 1972, is in the bag on a weighing platform in the sealed nitrogen cabinet in the upstairs processing line in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at the Manned Spacecraft Center. Just before, the sample was removed from one of the bolt-top cans visible to the left in the cabinet. The first reaction of Schmitt was "It doesn't look the same." Most of the geologists and staff viewing the sample agreed that it was more tan and brown than orange. Closer comparison with color charts showed that the sample had a definite orange cast, according the MSC geology branch Chief William Phinney. After closer investigation and sieving, it was discovered that the orange color was caused by very fine spheres and fragments of orange glass in the midst of darker colored, larger grain material. Earlier in the day the "orange" soil was taken from the Apollo Lunar Sample Return Container No. 2 and placed in the bolt-top can (as was all the material in the ALSRC "rock box").

S73-15171 (4 Jan. 1973) --- These orange glass spheres and fragments are the finest particles ever brought back from the moon. Ranging in size from 20 to 45 microns (about 1/1000 of an inch) the particles are magnified 160 times in this photomicrograph made in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at the Manned Spacecraft Center. The orange soil was brought back from the Taurus-Littrow landing site by the Apollo 17 crewmen. Scientist-astronaut Harrison H. "Jack" Schmitt discovered the orange soil at Shorty Crater during the second Apollo 17 extravehicular activity (EVA). This lunar material is being studied and analyzed by scientists in the LRL. The orange particles in this photomicrograph, which are intermixed with black and black-speckled grains, are about the same size as the particles that compose silt on Earth. Chemical analysis of the orange soil material has shown the sample to be similar to some of the samples brought back from the Apollo 11 (Sea of Tranquility) site several hundred miles to the southwest. Like those samples, it is rich in titanium (8%) and iron oxide (22%). But unlike the Apollo 11 samples, the orange soil is unexplainably rich in zinc ? an anomaly that has scientists in a quandary. This Apollo 17 sample is not high in volatile elements, nor do the minerals contain substantial amounts of water. These would have provided strong evidence of volcanic activity. On the other hand, the lack of agglutinates (rocks made up of a variety of minerals cemented together) indicates that the orange glass is probably not the product of meteorite impact -- strengthening the argument that the glass was produced by volcanic activity.