This story was updated at 3:20 p.m. to correct Brent Danley’s service length in the Air Force.

When NASA launches the final space shuttle of its 30-year program next week, Brent Danley of Saco will be watching and tweeting from a behind-the-scenes post at the Kennedy Space Center.

He and 149 other NASA Twitter followers were chosen at random from 5,500 online applicants. They will share their experiences in Florida with their more than 1.5 million combined followers in a “Tweetup.”

“You strap human beings in and add a tremendous amount of fuel and you light it. That’s exciting. Even 50 years ago, this stuff would have been science fiction,” said Danley, whose self-declared mission is to promote science literacy and excitement by tweeting the event.

“I’m just the eyes,” he said. “I’m not going to say I’ll be able to get all of southern Maine excited, but it can only be positive, whatever I can do.”

Armed with cameras, an iPhone, a Macbook and an iPad, Danley will tweet as he tours the launch pad Thursday, a day before the flight of Atlantis, visits the spaceship assembly plant and waves to Atlantis’ crew members on their drive to the launch pad.

This is the fifth time NASA has invited Twitter followers to experience a space shuttle launch.

“The Tweetups give people access to their space program,” said Stephanie Schierholz, NASA’s social media manager. “It’s more meaningful for people to follow someone they know than to just follow NASA on Twitter.”

NASA does not fund travel to the Tweetup, but it provides the opportunity to access the space center like never before.

The Atlantis Tweetup group will get to talk with top administrators, astronaut Mike Massimino, and even Elmo from “Sesame Street,” who will be there to film a show about space exploration.

Danley said he will use his flight and social media expertise to cultivate children’s interest in science and, he hopes, a childlike wonder in adults during his social media stint.

Danley has his private pilot’s certificate and served 11 years in the Air Force before starting his own Web design and development company in southern Maine.

He got interested in science and space at an early age, and was influenced by seeing his first shuttle launch when he was 12 — the fatal launch of the Challenger in 1986.

The Challenger exemplified the romanticism of space education because the crowd, and even the families of the astronauts, didn’t realize that they had witnessed a tragedy until they saw NASA employees crying, Danley said.

“When we go out to space, then we can have that wonder of a child again,” he said.

“Imagine being in lower orbit, crawling across the Earth, you can watch the art of color, daytime and nighttime. That learning and intellectual curiosity is the path to a happy life,” he said.

“To me, the whole purpose of life is to keep learning and discovering.”

The shuttle program is ending because of high operating costs, and while NASA will continue to send unmanned ships into space, for now the astronaut dream is a dying one, said Terry Shehata, executive director of the Maine Space Consortium.

“The general consensus amongst folks that work at NASA is to be saddened by this. It’s like cutting us off at the knees. It’s the end of an era of sending men and women to space since the ’60s,” he said.

But NASA will be anything but dormant, he said. Space exploration has been a major contributor to technology, inspiring everything from MRI scanners and laptops to the dimples on golf balls.

Shehata said this is an opportunity for the private sector to build rockets, and U.S. astronauts may join Russians. NASA will now focus on engaging the public in science and space education.

“The end of this mission is just a part of life,” he said.

Staff Writer Colleen Stewart can be contacted at 791-6355 or at:

cstewart@pressherald.com