Space nerds alert!

NASA’s latest Tweetup contest is set to begin today at 3pm EST.  It will run for 24 hours, closing Wednesday at 3pm.

NASA’s integration with the social media service began in 2009, when the first Tweetup allowed winners to visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  Later that year, NASA headquarters held its first Tweetup.  Since then, Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center have also hosted Tweetup winners for shuttle launches and the World Science Festival.

@jpltweetup
jpltweetupRegistration for the June 6 #NASATweetup hosted by @NASAJPL opens Tuesday, April 26 at noon PT (3pm ET) : http://bit.ly/eIKWhO 4 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto

For this latest Tweetup, NASA will choose 120 Twitter followers at random to visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Monday, June 6th.  From NASA:

With four space missions launching this year and an asteroid belt encounter nearly underway, 2011 will be one of the busiest ever in planetary exploration. Tweetup participants will interact with JPL scientists and engineers about these upcoming missions: Aquarius, to study ocean salinity; Grail, to study the moon’s gravity field; Juno to Jupiter; and the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity rover. Participants also will learn about the Dawn mission and its upcoming encounter with the asteroid Vesta.

The Tweetup will include a tour of JPL, robotics demonstrations and a last chance to see the Curiosity rover before it ships to Florida to prepare for a November launch. Tour stops will include the Spacecraft Assembly Facility where Curiosity is under construction, the mission control center of NASA’s Deep Space Network, and JPL’s new Earth Science Visitor Center.

Tweetup participants also will mingle with fellow attendees and the staff behind the tweets on @NASA and @NASAJPL, @MarsRovers, @AsteroidWatch and more.

The official Twitter account for this Tweetup is @JPLTweetup, but updates on registration and information can be found on the main NASA account.  The event is using #NASATweetup.

After registrations are complete, winners will receive email notifications no later than May 4th.

The last Tweetup registered on March 15th, and 150 lucky space nerds were selected to attend Friday’s final launch of Endeavor in Cape Canaveral, FL.