Rubber Chicken to 'Tweet' Shuttle Launch
Updated: Tuesday, 05 Jul 2011, 9:52 PM CDT
Published : Tuesday, 05 Jul 2011, 9:50 PM CDT
HOUSTON - The final launch in NASA’s 30-year old Space Shuttle program is drawing as many as one million spectators to Cape Canaveral.
And among them are a select few social-media mavens with backstage passes, including a rubber chicken named Camilla.
From something like 5,000 applications, NASA selected 150 Twitter users to participate in a launch “Tweet-Up.” Twitter allows people to broadcast short bulletins to their followers.
Heather Archuletta and Jeff Wallace were invited. FOX 26 News caught up with them along I-10 as they road-tripped from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic.
“We'll get there on (July) 6th,” said Wallace, who goes by the Twitter handle @Rocketman528. “The tweet-up starts on the 7th, hopefully launch on the 8th.”
“People ask me why am I driving 6,000 miles; that's why,” said Archuletta, whose Twitter nickname is @Pillownaut. “It's a real once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
The two carpoolers are joined by a rubber chicken named Camilla Corona, the mascot of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
And, yes, although the rubber chicken cannot type, she still has her own Twitter feed and Facebook page.
“We're very proud to have her on our road trip with us,” said Archuletta, who’s been known to help Camilla peck out an update.
“She's been twittering along the way. We're just stopping at little space things all along the road, like we went to the UFO Museum (in Roswell, NM). We're chauffeuring her to the last launch so that she can meet all of the folks at the countdown clock.”
The countdown began on Tuesday afternoon. Unless the launch is scrubbed for bad weather or technical glitches, the space shuttle Atlantis should lift-off on Friday.
“The most exciting thing about tweeting a launch is really just being able to share it with everyone else,” said Wallace.
“I think you're probably going to see a lot of tears at this one,” added Archuletta. “This will never happen again.”
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Atlantis Launch Tweet-Up: “Follow” Your Favorite:
Camilla Corona the Rubber Chicken
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