NASA Hosts 150 Twitter Followers at Mars Rover Launch

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Veronica McGregor 818-354-9452
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
veronica.c.mcgregor@jpl.nasa.gov

Stephanie L. Schierholz 202-358-4997
NASA Headquarters, Washington
stephanie.schierholz@nasa.gov

News release: 2011-354 Nov. 16, 2011

NASA Hosts 150 Twitter Followers at Mars Rover Launch

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-354&cid=release_2011-354

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA has invited 150 followers of the agency's Twitter account to
a two-day launch Tweetup on Nov. 23 and 25 at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in
Florida.

The Tweetup is expected to culminate in the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory's
Curiosity rover aboard an Atlas V rocket from nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The launch window is scheduled to open at 7:25 a.m. PST (10:25 a.m. EST) on Nov. 25.
Curiosity's arrival at Mars' Gale Crater is anticipated in August 2012. During the nearly
two-year prime mission, the rover will investigate whether a selected area of Mars
offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life and preserved that
evidence, if it existed.

Tweetup participants were selected from more than 1,050 people who registered online.
They will share their Tweetup experiences with their followers through the social
networking site Twitter and other online forums.

Participants represent the United States, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France,
Germany, Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom. Attendees from the U.S. come from
the District of Columbia and 37 states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut,
Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska,
New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon,
Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and
Wisconsin.

Beginning at 8 a.m. PST (11 a.m. EST) on Wednesday, Nov. 23, NASA will broadcast a
portion of the Tweetup when attendees talk with Jim Green, Planetary Science division
director, and Doug McCuistion, Mars Exploration program director, both from NASA
Headquarters in Washington. Engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., where the rover was designed and built, will speak, as will mission
scientists.

To watch the launch broadcast, visit: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-tweetup .
The broadcast with live chat will begin at 6:30 a.m. PST (9:30 a.m. EST) on
http://ustream.tv/nasajpl .

Tweetup participants also will tour Kennedy and Cape Canaveral, including a close-up
visit to the launch pad. On launch day, they will speak with NASA Administrator Charles
Bolden; Leland Melvin, NASA's assistant administrator for education; astronaut Doug
Wheelock and Bill Nye the Science Guy.

NASA invited its Twitter followers to attend eight previous launches: NASA's newest
Earth-observing satellite, NPP; the twin GRAIL spacecraft bound for the moon; the Juno
spacecraft on its way to Jupiter; and five space shuttle missions.

To follow participants on Twitter as they experience the prelaunch events and Curiosity's
liftoff, follow the #NASATweetup hashtag and the list of attendees at:
https://twitter.com/NASATweetup/mars-curiosity .

JPL manages the mission. NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy is managing the
launch.

For more information about the Mars Curiosity rover, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl
and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl .

Interact with the mission via Twitter and Facebook accounts at:
http://Twitter.com/MarsCuriosity and http://Facebook.com/MarsCuriosity .

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

-end-

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