When was the last time you traveled out into the country, free from light pollution, and spent a night lying on the ground gazing at the stars? They are absolutely beautiful. Being there, looking into the eyes of infinity, one cannot help but to wonder - about life, about space, about our origins. And while we might not ever be able to answer all of our questions, we are living in an incredible time of learning about our physical universe. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is at the forefront of this time of discovery, extending our understanding of both future and past daily.

NASA's efforts to explore the cosmos have improved life on Earth in many ways. This website is one of the results of our team's efforts to aid NASA's continuing efforts of education and discovery. Our team started with a simple goal: develop methods for NASA, a leading figure in our scientific quest, to promote its planned Mars missions to the public. As our project will show, NASA has run into some problems in recent years promoting its work, so much needs to be done to improve NASA's public relations.

We could write pages of rationales and backgrounds -- and we have -- to justify this project or the need to explore Mars. We encourage you to read all of this material, as we feel it provides important insight into an agency that touches our lives in more ways than we know. There is another rationale, though, that is hard to place a finger on, hard to put into words. You can find this one too, from anywhere in the world. Go find that country field and spend a night watching for comets: when you return the next morning, we think you will understand the drive to explore.

This web site will take you step by step through our project. Start either below, or with the navigation bar at the top of each page. The site is divided into main categories, on the navigation bar above, and subcategories that will appear below it. It is best followed in sequential order, however we encourage the casual browser to read anything that piques your interest. We hope this website will help further your knowledge and excite you about future discovery.

Happy Exploring

 

 

 

 

NASA and the Public This section provides a brief overview of NASA's current problems with public relations and how our project's research will reflect them.
Case Study Research To better understand the history of NASA's relationship with the public, we conducted a variety of case studies dealing with various situations that we suspected would be relevant to our analysis and recommendations for NASA. Not all case studies are about NASA, though all draw conclusions that guided us in the creation and evaluation of our outreach plan.
Outreach Plan The Outreach Plan is our proposed method of Mars promotion. It draws from the conclusions of the case studies, along with outside research, to create a comprehensive plan covering many age groups.
Outreach Essay The Outreach Essay is an educational article about the history, future, and benefits of Mars exploration. It gives a great overview of projects that will be in the news for years to come, along with interesting facts about Mars.
 

 

 

 

It is important to note that this project draws from the work of many sources, which are not cited on this site. We feel it is important to give credit to the many authors whose material we drew upon to create this project. For a full bibliography, or a copy of our written report, which includes full citations, email crm3z@virginia.edu.