Are #NASAtweetup and other social media missions helping NASA gain public approval?
(CBS/What's Trending) Forget about meeting up: For the upcoming Endeavor launch, NASA is proving it's all about the tweetup.
Instead of just inviting the press, the space agency invited 150 bloggers and social media elite to watch the preparations for Endeavor's mission at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, with the hopes that they would use their influence online to spread up-to-date news about the launch. #NASAtweetup was broadcast live around the world simultaneously as well.
This public outreach is important to NASA because the space shuttle
program is ending, and the public isn't as interested in space research as they use to be. The focus on the
space program is a far cry from where it was when the nation was tuned
in to every launch in the 1960s. NASA is hoping if more people care about the final frontier, it will become an important research cause that politicians can't avoid giving tax dollar funding to.
Stefanie Michaels, aka @adventuregirl, told What's Trending, "The fact that I'm here, physically in person, experiencing this live from online to off line is truly about social melding with accessibility. NASA is so accessible compared to most government agencies."
Actor @sethgreen was one of the 150 chosen and tweeted live from the tweetup.
This isn't the first time you could "virtually" attend a NASA event. The space agency has been working hard to build a relationship with people in the digital world. NASA's held its first tweetup in 2009, when competition winners were invited to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Last October, astronaut Doug Wheellock was the first person to check into Foursquare on the International Space Station. Through NASA's partnership with Foursquare, even if you can't get buy a ticket to space, you can still get a NASA Explorer Badge by checking in at various locations, including the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC.NASA also has a free app for your phone that allows you to stay connected to a particular mission, giving you updates from Mission Control, live streams from NASA TV, NASA images and access to NASA's Twitter feeds. NASA plans to launch a page on Buzzroom to keep track of all photos, tweets and videos with the NASA hashtag.
It seems NASA is getting that much-needed attention back, partially thanks to their social media outreach. President Barack Obama will be the first sitting president to present at a space shuttle launch since 1998, currently scheduled for Friday at 3:47PM EST. The agency is expecting record crowds of 700,000 to show up at Kennedy Space Center to watch the final shuttle mission of Endeavour.
But if you can't get a ticket to Florida for the date, don't worry: You can watch the launch live at on NASA's site. All that NASA hopes is that you care enough to tune in.