NASA Tweetup

Yesterday I got to officially use Twitter for work! I was one of 13 NASA Ambassadors for a NASA Tweetup (#nasatweetup) held at JSC. If you’re not a Twitter user, this may not make much sense, so here’s the quick explanation: space enthusiasts active on Twitter were invited to submit their name for one of 100 spots available to come to JSC, meet some astronauts, and take a tour of some of the coolest facilities here in Houston. The visitors, or “Space Tweeps,” came from all over — various places across the US as well as Canada, Mexico, and even Brazil! They paid their own way, but in return NASA provided them with a day full of awesome tours and activities and “insider access” to JSC.

I’ve been active on Twitter for a while, and often use it to share some of the fun things I get to do in my job, so JSC Public Affairs asked me and 12 others like me to serve as “NASA Ambassadors” for the event. We got to participate throughout the day, chatting with the visitors and answering lots of questions about what we do. I only took a few crappy iPhone pictures, but hopefully those will give you a sense of what went on!

The group began their day at Space Center Houston (@SpaceCenterHou), where they were welcomed and got to participate in a live Twitter session with astronaut Cady Coleman (@Astro_Cady) who was on travel but set aside a half hour to take virtual questions.

After a short welcome, the day’s events got underway with a Q&A session with astronaut Bobby Satcher (@Astro_Bones or @ZeroG_MD). He was a Mission Specialist on STS-129, so he began with an extended highlight video of that flight narrated by the whole crew. I didn’t go to the 129 crew’s debrief, so I had never seen the video, and it was a lot of fun to watch it after serving as their lead Rendezvous Officer.

Afterwards, he signed some autographs for the visitors, and then everyone was free to explore Space Center Houston and have some lunch. At that point I headed back to the office for a few hours while everyone went on tours of both the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL, aka the big pool where the astronauts train for spacewalks) and the shuttle and space station training mockups.

I rejoined the group when they arrived to see Mission Control. The Tweetup organizers planned things perfectly so that all the visitors were in the shuttle viewing room when the shuttle crew got their wakeup call. I think they all got a kick out of that, and it was good that there was some action to watch — because honestly, watching people sit at their consoles gets old kind of quick. 😉

The next stop was the historic Apollo control center, which is always a highlight for any visitor.

From there, they went directly downstairs to the ISS viewing room, and were able to stay there and listen to President Obama’s call to the STS-130 and ISS crew. That was completely a freebie — I don’t think even PAO knew that Obama would be calling the crew until yesterday. I guess when you’re the President, you can talk to space pretty much whenever you want. 😉
All in all, it was a really fun day. I love sharing NASA with visitors, and this kind of thing always makes me feel refreshed and reinspired about my own job. Even with all the uncertainty about NASA’s future that’s been swirling around since the budget announcement on February 1, NASA is still a great place to be.