House employee selected to attend Space shuttle launch

Danielle Bass, who serves as office manager to Rep. Ryan Yamane, will be covering the liftoff of the space shuttle Discovery via Twitter. Bass was selected by NASA to participate at the “NASA Tweetup” to cover the events 24 hours prior to the launch and the launch itself, targeted to take place at 4:40 p.m. EDT on November 1, 2010.

NASA is hosting 150 people from around the world and will provide them with a behind-the-scenes perspective to share with their followers via the social networking service Twitter. Bass is the only “tweep” from Hawaii going to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. According to NASA, attendees will be coming from 38 states, the District of Columbia, Australia, Canada, Chile, England, Japan, Latvia, New Zealand and the Philippines; all were selected randomly from more than 2,700 online registrations. Attendees are responsible for their own travel.

Twitter users can follow Bass’s tweets at www.twitter.com/dani_bass.

In addition, Bass created her own website at www.imuanahoku.com, especially for schools and classrooms to follow the launch, and for those who are not on Twitter.

“I’m excited and honored to be representing Hawaii at this historic event,” said Bass. “This will be the last launch and flight of the space shuttle Discovery, the oldest orbiter of the shuttle fleet. I’ve always been interested in flying and in the NASA program, and I’m grateful for this incredible opportunity. I’ll be tweeting and updating my website all weekend.”