JPL Tweetup Previews Missions: Mars, Jupiter and More

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will host a Tweetup for approximately 120 Twitter followers on Monday, June 6.

With four space missions launching this year and an asteroid belt encounter nearly underway, 2011 will be one of the busiest ever in planetary exploration. Tweetup participants will interact with JPL scientists and engineers about these upcoming missions: Aquarius, to study ocean salinity; Grail, to study the moon's gravity field; Juno to Jupiter; and the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity rover. Participants also will learn about the Dawn mission and its upcoming encounter with the asteroid Vesta.

The Tweetup will include a tour of JPL, robotics demonstrations and a last chance to see the Curiosity rover before it ships to Florida to prepare for a November launch. Tour stops will include the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, where Curiosity is under construction, the mission control center of NASA's Deep Space Network, and JPL's new Earth Science Visitor Center.

Tweetup participants also will mingle with fellow attendees and the staff behind the tweets on @NASA, @NASAJPL, @MarsRovers, @AsteroidWatch and more.

Registration for the event opens at noon PDT (3 p.m. EDT) on Tuesday, April 26, and it closes at noon PDT (3 p.m. EDT) on Wednesday, April 27. For more information about the Tweetup and to sign up, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup .

NASA Television will broadcast portions of the Tweetup on June 6 at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-hd-tv and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

Find all the ways to connect and collaborate with NASA at: http://www.nasa.gov/connect
For more information about JPL, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/jpl . JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-125