You Tube is setting its sight on outer space with the launching of its You Tube Space Lab Channel and is currently inviting students to present unique concepts for experiments that can be conducted in the vast cosmos.

No other video streaming site has done this before.

Recent research surveys ranked You Tube remained at second place among social networking sites with a little over 20% of visits from 19.94% in April. Twitter now occupies number three with 1.15 % market share of visits.

MySpace dropped to fifth spot with a mere 1.06% in market share. LinkedIn has climbed to number four by a minimal 0.39% stake of the market.

The growth and popularity of social networking sites have become phenomenal not only among the younger generation but adults as well. While You Tube, Facebook and MySpace are known more as personal sites, LinkedIn and Twitter are preferred for business purposes.

Those who are lucky to be chosen by a panel of judges that includes Professor Stephen Hawking, it will be performed aboard the International Space Station and streamed live on YouTube next year according to Cnet.UK.

Participants should be between 14 and 18-years-old. They have until 7 December to submit their entries.

In a blog post, YouTube Space Lab lead, Zahaan Bharmal, announced the competition.

"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," he explained.

The board of judges consists of astronauts and NASA chiefs. So any joke entries are likely to be weeded out at an early stage.

Lucky winners will not only go to space. They can win ZERO-G flights, Lenovo IdeaPad laptops, and a choice of one of two trips of a lifetime: a journey to Tanegashima Island, Japan, to see a rocket carrying their experiment blast off to the International Space Station, or, once they're 18, a chance to be trained as a Russian cosmonaut in Star City, Russia, the news report said.

Pproject partners include Lenovo, Space Adventures, NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).