NASA invites 150 Twitter followers to Jupiter rocket launch

By Mike Dunn August 2, 2011

Are you a fan of all things space-related and follow NASA on Twitter? If so, then you had a chance to win an invite to Florida to watch a real-life NASA launch. As we all know, the space-shuttle program is officially over, so this isn’t a shuttle launch, but it is still a launch. NASA invited 150 of its Twitter followers, from six countries, to take part in this event. The 150 lucky Twitter followers will take part in a Tweetup, and will be able to watch the launch of the Juno spacecraft.

Juno will be hitching a ride on an Atlas V rocket, which will be leaving Cape Canaveral Florida bound for Jupiter. Juno is scheduled to arrive at Jupiter in 2016, and once there it will become a shutter bug. NASA is planning on Juno to take several high-detail pictures of Jupiter and its poles. While there, it will also investigate the gas giant’s interior, atmosphere, and aurora.

The winners will also be able to meet and talk to several of NASA’s top names. One such speaker is Waleed Abdalati, who happens to be the chief scientist at NASA’s headquarters. Besides being a pretty lofty title, we are quite sure that Abdalati is also fairly intelligent, and hopefully can answer most questions lobbed his way. Our advice for the 150 individuals is to study the NPR chart on the shuttle program we discussed recently, so you can have something to talk about with NASA’s head hanchos.

If you want to watch the launch, you can do so on NASA’s official Ustream account. The launch is scheduled for August 4, but they are leaving August 5 open just in case the weather doesn’t cooperate. This isn’t the first time that NASA has invited people to watch a launch via Twitter, so start following them if you would like your chance at watching the next launch.

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