COEUR d'ALENE - Christy Stephens is stoked about her trip to Florida this week.

Sure, she's happy about visiting the Sunshine State's 80-degree, balmy weather, but Stephens is even more excited because she will be NASA's guest, invited to observe the launch, by rocket, of a rover headed for outer space. Its mission - to investigate Gale crater on Mars.

The 35-year-old North Idaho College nursing student has another kind of space to thank for the opportunity - cyberspace.

Stephens was selected to travel to Kennedy Space Center this week to participate in a two-day Tweetup hosted by the national space exploration agency. The Post Falls resident will join 149 other science fans randomly selected from a pool of more than 1,000 who follow NASA on the Twitter social messaging medium.

In October, when Stephens learned she had been chosen, she sent out a Twitter message: "My nerd dreams are coming true. Let the countdown begin!"

Tweetups are gatherings of people who use Twitter, and NASA has been using them to spread its message since 2009.

Stephens and this week's other Tweetup participants have their own mission - to share their experiences online with their social network followers.

A self-described geek who loves technology and NASA, Stephens' Twitter handle is @cstephens30.

"What I'm hoping for is that I can get more local followers," Stephens said. "I'll be tweeting the entire time I'm down there."

Stephens traveled to Florida today and will be there for a week.

She and the other Tweetup participants will be NASA's VIP guests, touringKennedy Space Center and nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover is scheduled to launch Friday, aboard an Atlas V rocket.

They will visit with NASA administrators, scientists and astronauts. Stephens is particularly excited about meeting a well-known science guy who will be there.

Another recent tweet: "I get to meet Bill Nye in a week!! I can't wait!"

Stephens' NASA affinity goes way back.

"My parents, when I was 10, gave me a telescope and a microscope," she said. "I've always loved NASA, always."

Stephens has visited Houston twice, and "spent days" at the NASA space center there.

She started following the agency on Twitter about a year ago, and quickly connected with other like-minded science-loving techies.

She has gotten to know her fellow Tweetup participants through social networking, and meets them face-to-face on Tuesday.

"We're all friends on Facebook. Everyone is super excited. There are all types of people going. We have astrophysicists, a guy that works in the White House, one works for a senator in Florida, a librarian, a stay-at-home mom," Stephens said. "This is the one thing we have in common."

The group of participants includes people from 10 nations and 37 states.

The launch window is scheduled to open Saturday at 7:02 a.m. PST. Curiosity's arrival at Mars' Gale Crater is anticipated in August 2012. The rover will spend two years investigating the area's environmental conditions, looking for evidence whether microbial life was ever able to exist there.

For more information about the Mars Curiosity rover, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl .

Interact with the mission via Twitter and Facebook accounts at: http://Twitter.com/MarsCuriosity and http://Facebook.com/MarsCuriosity