NASA Invites Questions Via Twitter For Space Station News Briefings

News provided by

Mar 19, 2012, 04:46 ET

HOUSTON, March 19, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- For the first time, NASA will take questions from Twitter during news briefings about upcoming International Space Station missions on Tuesday, March 20, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. After reporters at the event ask questions, NASA will take as many questions as possible submitted on Twitter using the hashtag #askStation. Questions will be selected in advance and during the briefings. NASA Television and the agency's website will broadcast the events live.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)

The briefings will preview the upcoming Expedition 32 and 33 space station missions. At 11 a.m. CDT, the space station program and science overview briefing will cover mission priorities and objectives. These include hundreds of research experiments, a Russian spacewalk, international and commercial cargo deliveries to the station and a commercial cargo demonstration flight.

The briefing participants are:

-- Michael Suffredini, International Space Station program manager

-- Dina Contella, Expedition 32 lead flight director

-- Tara Ruttley, associate International Space Station program scientist

At 1 p.m., Expedition 32/33 crew members Sunita Williams of NASA, Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency will discuss their mission. They are set to launch to the orbiting outpost aboard the Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft July 15 and return to Earth in November.

Williams, Hoshide and Malenchenko are three of the six crew members comprising Expeditions 32 and 33. When they arrive at the station, they will join NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin.

To watch the briefings live, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the space station and its crew, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

SOURCE NASA