If you're a teen and have a great idea, this is your chance

Oct 10, 2011 18:04 GMT  ·  By

If you're a teen and you're into science and space, YouTube could help you make your wildest dreams come true. The video site, along with Lenovo and NASA, ESA, JAXA and Space Adventures, is holding a competition which will see two experiments, pitched by YouTube users, performed aboard the International Space Station.

Come up with a cool idea, upload it to YouTube and submit it to the competition and you'll have a chance to see whatever you come up performed in space and broadcast live on YouTube.

"Interested students are invited to come up with an idea for a science experiment that can be conducted in space and upload a video explaining it to YouTube by December 7, 2011," Zahaan Bharmal, head of the YouTube Space Lab project, wrote.

"The YouTube community and a panel of distinguished scientists, astronauts and expert judges, including Professor Stephen Hawking, will pick the best ones. If your video is selected, it will be performed aboard the ISS and live streamed on YouTube to the world in 2012," he explained.

Bharmal came up with the idea and pitched during one of Google's internal competition in which all Googlers can showcase whatever they had in mind.

The idea was liked and YouTube got in touch with those running the International Space Station, namely the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), to make it happen.

Anyone interested can submit their ideas to youtube.com/SpaceLab until early December. The best two experiments will be conducted next year.

There are other prizes as well, Lenovo IdeaPad laptops, Zero G flights and a choice of either a trip to Tanegashima Island, Japan, where the rocket carrying the winning experiments will blast off headed to the ISS, or an astronaut training program at Star City, Russia.