NASA Invites 150 Lucky Twitter Followers To Endeavour Launch

Stephanie L. Schierholz

Headquarters, Washington

WASHINGTON -- NASA invited 150 lucky people to a behind-the-scenes perspective from the press site at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the final launch of space shuttle Endeavour on Friday, April 29. The launch is scheduled for 3:47 p.m. EDT.

The participants were selected randomly from more than 4,100 online registrants during a 24-hour opportunity in mid-March. Attendees represent 43 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Switzerland, Venezuela, and the U.K. Participants will share their experiences with their more than 3.7 million combined followers through the social networking site Twitter. On Sunday, the agency surpassed one million followers on its flagship Twitter account, @NASA.

Beginning at noon on April 28, NASA will broadcast a portion of the Tweetup when participants get to talk with NASA's Chief Scientist Waleed Abdalati; Endeavour's Flow Director Dana M. Hutcherson; International Space Station Associate Program Scientist Tara Ruttley; astronaut Clay Anderson; and Principal Investigator of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2, Sam Ting. To watch the broadcast, visit

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasatelevision.

Participants also will tour Kennedy and get a spacesuit demonstration. The Tweetup culminates with the launch.

Reporters who are credentialed to cover the launch also may cover the NASA Tweetup at Kennedy's press site. Reporters interested in interviewing Tweetup attendees in advance should contact Stephanie Schierholz at 202-358-1100 or stephanie.schierholz@nasa.gov.

This is the fourth time NASA has invited its Twitter followers to experience a space shuttle launch. Previously, groups attended Atlantis' STS-129 and STS-132 missions and Discovery's STS-133 launch. NASA also hosts Tweetup events at other NASA centers.

Registration for an event June 6 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will open at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, April 26, for 24 hours at http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup.

To follow the Tweetup participants on Twitter as they experience the prelaunch events and shuttle liftoff, follow the #NASATweetup hashtag and the list of attendees at http://twitter.com/nasatweetup/sts-134-launch.

To connect with NASA on Twitter and other social networking sites, visit http://www.nasa.gov/connect.

For more information about space shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 mission, visit  http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle.

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