Rating:

4.0 (3 votes)

A Great Falls man will be "lifting off" to watch the space shuttle Atlantis roar into space next month.

Jess Lucero is one of only 150 people across the nation selected to attend the NASA "tweetup" at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 7th and 8th.

The "tweetup" is designed to give users of the social networking site Twitter the opportunity to tour the NASA facility, watch the launch of the space shuttle, and meet with NASA managers, technicians, and astronauts.

The July 8th launch is historic because it will be final flight of NASA's space shuttle program before the program is retired.

You can follow the NASA tweetup right here.

More information about STS-135 here, including this overview:

The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 directs NASA to conduct the STS-135 mission. The Space Shuttle Program has added the mission to the manifest to prepare for a potential target launch date in early July.

Atlantis will carry the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module to deliver supplies, logistics and spare parts to the International Space Station. The mission also will fly a system to investigate the potential for robotically refueling existing spacecraft and return a failed ammonia pump module to help NASA better understand the failure mechanism and improve pump designs for future systems.