NASA Hosts Social Media Events Across Seven Agency Field Centers

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's social media followers at seven field centers around the nation will virtually come together at a NASA Social on Friday, Aug. 3, to preview the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory's (MSL) Curiosity rover on Aug. 6 EDT (Aug. 5 PDT).

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NASA Socials are in-person meetings with people who engage with the agency through Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social networks. Events will be held simultaneously at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.; Glenn Research Center in Cleveland; Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.; Johnson Space Center in Houston; Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Kennedy will be celebrating its 50th anniversary during its NASA Social.

From 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. EDT, every center will be connected with JPL, which manages the MSL mission for NASA, via a multi-center NASA Television simulcast. NASA Social participants at each center will have the opportunity to ask questions of the JPL science and engineering teams during the simulcast. More than 150 social media followers also will tour their respective host NASA center.

You can view the social online during the day Friday by visiting a NASA dashboard at: http://www.nasa.gov/social. To get an inside view during the simulcast with all the centers participating, view the new NASA superchannel and select webcam views at http://www.ustream.tv/nasa. The NASA Social speaker program and news conferences also will be carried on http://ustream.tv/NASAJPL with live moderated Web chat.

After the multi-center events on Friday, the JPL NASA Social will continue with activities on Saturday, Aug. 4, and Sunday, Aug. 5, for 25 participants. They will have the opportunity to tour JPL, participate in news conferences and be present when the first signal of the rover's landing is detected by JPL mission control.

To join and track the conversation online during the NASA Socials, follow the hashtag #NASASocial. Use and reference the #MSL hashtag for mission updates. NASA will be taking questions from social media users during select news conferences and other televised news events using the hashtag #askNASA.

For more information on the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity mission, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/msl  

The public can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:
http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity  

and
http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity  

For information about connecting and collaborating with NASA, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/connect  

For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

SOURCE NASA