Media is the plural of mediocre

A few weeks ago I signed up to take part in an event being held at Kennedy Space Center. As part of public awareness, NASA had hosted several Tweetup events in the past where active members of the social application, Twitter, were invited out to learn about the organization, specific mission, and get access to the compound. The intent was to help spread awareness among the public of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) by utilizing people that are active in social interaction, education, and photography and giving them enough access to share their experience. the past events had a large number of participants, however for this event only 15 people were going to be selected to take part. When registering, I had to provide writing samples, links to my accounts, and other information of my past experiences. Though I don't know what criteria was used, I was fortunate enough to be selected to take part in the event.

On Feb 9, the group first met up just outside the visitor center to collect our access badges, greet fellow participants (through various exercises), and tour the facilities. The correspondents each had various skills and experiences. We had several correspondents that were astrophysicists, some teachers, various NASA employees, and even an ex-shuttle technician. Everyone had been active in the Twitter and blogging mediums. Over the next three days, everone would be busy with tours, updates, and briefings.

Pics taken during 3 Day event: http://picasaweb.google.com/mblitch/SDOTwitterLaunchEvent#

I'm going to take you on a scenic tour and show everyone the beauty that is you

We were all loaded up into a bus and driving around the NASA compound and even were given proximity access to the shuttle pad. We took several closeup shots of the VAB and even stopped by the Saturn building for a quick walk around before heading to the visitor center to attend a press briefing. At the briefing several of the head administrators as well as some mission designers and specialists were available to answer questions and convey some information about the program.

It was great to be able to get some access to the general non-public tours and locations. The #SDOisGo twitter hash tag was getting constant use through the day as the correspondents constantly updated the world with the up-to-the-minute information.

I'd like to say more but I've run out of time and space.

After the previous morning's scrubbed launch, I finally got to see NASA's STS-130 mission of the launch of Endeavour. It went up right at 4:14AM and was a lovely sight. Tomorrow starts the activities related to the launch of the SDO module aboard an Atlas rocket that is hopefully scheduled to be sent up around 10:30AM Wednesday.

Video recorded by my Olympus camera

Video recorded by iPhone 3GS

When you're up to your hips in alligators, you forget the original project was to drain the swamp

After the shuttle launch, I caught up on some reading at the library and did a little exploring and geocaching around some of the various parks, including nearby Kars Park where I found a few sunning alligators on the trail.

KSC walk