Tellus' Schulman To Tweet Mars Rover Launch

NASA is bringing 150 of its Twitter followers, including  Director of Marketing Joe Schulman, to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for a two-day Tweetup this Wednesday and Friday.

The Tweetup is expected to culminate in the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 541 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Curiosity is anticipated to arrive at the Red Planet’s Gale crater in August 2012.

During the two-year mission, the rover will investigate whether a selected area of Mars offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life and will preserve evidence about life if it existed.

As a NASA Tweetup attendee, Schulman and the other 149 Twitter users will interact with engineers and scientists as well as tour the Kennedy Space Center.

If all goes as scheduled, participants will view the spacecraft launch. In addition, participants will meet other tweeps and members of NASA’s social media team.

Attendees were selected through a lottery system in which more than 1,050 @NASA Twitter followers registered. NASA Tweetup participants are traveling from across the United States and the globe to attend.

NASA’s Tweetup Twitter account is http://twitter.com/NASATweetup and participants will be using #NASATweetup in their updates while tweeting. Information about NASA Tweetup can be viewed on http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup.

About the Mars Science Laboratory Mission
Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Mars Science Laboratory is the fourth space mission launching this year. Aquarius, launched June 10 to study ocean salinity, was the first; Juno, launched Aug. 5 to study the origins and interior of Jupiter; and the twin GRAIL orbiters, which departed for the moon on Sept. 10. The MLS Curiosity rover is equipped with 10 science instruments and will search Mars for evidence it has had environments favorable for microbial life. The rover will use a laser to look inside rocks and release the gasses so that its spectrometer can analyze and send the data back to Earth. Launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Find additional information about the Mars Science Laboratory mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.