How The US Government Signed Back Onto The Internet

The third longest federal government shutdown in history ended Wednesday night after 16 days. And with its reopening, the government signed back on to the Internet.

Many government sites went offline at the advent of the shutdown. On Thursday, they came back - and most marked the occasion on Twitter:

We're back and in the process of turning things back on! http://t.co/IpvHUzr4tm and #NASA TV will be up as soon as possible!

- NASA (@NASA) October 17, 2013

...and we're back.

- USGS (@USGS) October 17, 2013

Library of Congress to Re-Open Oct. 17: The federal government shutdown has ended. The Library of Congress wil... http://t.co/sXKgfDl164

- Library of Congress (@librarycongress) October 17, 2013

We're back up & tweeting. Facebook's cooking too on @USNavy history. See http://t.co/3YfIBmd2XS

- HistoryNavyNews (@HistoryNavyNews) October 17, 2013

The U.S. Department of Labor and all Federal government operations are now open!

- US Labor Department (@USDOL) October 17, 2013

Here's Secretary of Education Arne Duncan:

We're back!!

- Arne Duncan (@arneduncan) October 17, 2013

And NASA also posted a photo to Instagram. It's from astronaut Mike Hopkins, who on Oct. 9 took a picture of the Northern Lights aboard the International Space Station: