Guidelines for NASA Program Development

The history of NASA's Mars Exploration Program and the above case studies suggest several guidelines for NASA's outreach program development. The following recommendations address shortcomings in NASA's approach that were exposed in the historical analysis and case studies of this project.
The case study analysis resulted in several "duplicated conclusions," that is, similar conclusions were independently reached in each case. These conclusions were considered most important in the development of the outreach plan, as they addressed a continuing problem in NASA's public relations activities.

1. Improve the Frequency and Strength of Media Contact
After entering the workforce, many Americans have no source of information other than the media. Without the information provided by an educational institution, many adults who have completed their formal education know only as much about NASA as the media tells them. Additionally, American students are similarly exposed to the media with regularity. This constant contact of Americans with the media provides NASA with a frequent outlet for informing the public about its undertakings. Positive media coverage is therefore critical for receiving the support of the American public.

In general, however, the relationship between the media and the scientific community is weak. As demonstrated in the case study "Science and the Media: A General Analysis," scientists and the media often fail to communicate effectively, inhibited by the barriers of professional custom, technical language, and historical secrecy.

This communication gap is compounded by NASA's lacking relationship with the public. As in the general scientific community, the professional custom of NASA researchers discourages contact with the media. Case A described the stigma scientists often place on their colleagues when they communicate with the general media. NASA researchers do interact extensively with the general scientific community, and as such, they are similarly discouraged from interacting with the media. Additionally, NASA's identity as a governmental agency creates further problems in professional custom. The government has established routes of communicating through the media with press departments, press secretaries, and spokespersons. NASA researchers may feel that it is not their job to address media concerns about their research, and instead simply support the appropriate departments of NASA in their communication with the media. This practice eliminates any media contact with the most important individuals in the research process - the principal investigators of scientific research.

The problems associated with technical language are more easily circumvented in NASA's relationship with the media than in other areas of scientific research. The general concepts of space exploration are fairly easy to explain. NASA's descriptions of the Mars Exploration Program, for instance, are routinely supplemented with artistic renditions of NASA missions, photographs taken by NASA rovers and orbiters, and diagrams illustrating basic scientific concepts such as spacecraft trajectories and launch procedures. Although the technology incorporated in each mission is just as advanced as the research conducted in other laboratories across the country, the use of this technology within an exploration mission makes it easy to demonstrate its significance and utility without necessarily explaining its function.

Finally, NASA does not share the same history of secrecy as other government research agencies. The Department of Energy, for example, maintained an air of secrecy around its nuclear energy research throughout the Cold War. While NASA does develop technology in support of the Defense Department, NASA's research primarily supports either its exploration programs or American technology in general. Through its commercial technology program, NASA is actually less secretive than private research organizations-the agency makes no claim to intellectual property rights, but rather organizes the distribution of this technology throughout the private sector.

In the past, however, any perceived effort to maintain secrecy in the organization has been coldly received by the public. The case study "Reactions to the Challenger Crisis" illustrated how NASA's public image suffered after the agency confiscated video tapes of the Challenger disaster. Although the agency's officials simply needed to view the accident from as many angles as possible at as high a resolution as possible, the speed of NASA's action, taken without the permission of the video tapes' owners, irritated the American media. Many journalists and members of the public felt that the government was attempting to cover-up the true nature of the disaster by confiscating the tapes. This would not have been the case had NASA taken a more cooperative approach toward obtaining the tapes from the media agencies that owned them.

Further distancing NASA from the public is a higher level of security guarding its research centers than most private laboratories. NASA centers feature a high level of security. Although this security is absolutely necessary for the safety of the center and its staff, it may also discourage visitors such as journalists and ordinary citizens who hope to learn more about the center and its activities.

NASA can amend these barriers that separate researchers and media. An agency-wide effort to eliminate the professional custom of avoiding media contact should take two approaches. First, it should encourage researchers to communicate with the media and reward those who do. At the most basic level, this simply implies that NASA administrators should communicate their will for increased media contact to all of NASA's researchers. In support of this desire, the NASA award system should commend those researchers that undertake significant efforts to communicate their research to the media in a manner that is both understandable and interesting. NASA should issue press releases more frequently and provide oversight to ensure that these press releases are understandable and accurate.
At the same time, researchers should be held responsible for the promotion of their work to the public. Non-government researchers spend a great deal of time promoting their research to public and private funding agencies. NASA researchers should similarly be accountable for explaining their research to the public that funds it. Some might argue that this emphasis on promotion diverts the researchers' attention away from their work. However, the non-governmental scientific community performs this self-promotion efficiently. Most NASA researchers have either worked outside the agency themselves or have worked with other researchers currently outside the agency and would be familiar with the need to promote their research. Additionally, this process will improve the quality of NASA's work by eliminating those research projects that are unjustifiable to the public and by encouraging researchers to think more about the potential applications of their work.

To address the problem of the language barrier that separates the scientific community and journalists, NASA should continue emphasizing its exploration missions. The vast amounts of pure research and advancements in aerospace engineering should not be neglected, however. Space exploration sometimes may seem only remotely connected to the public interest, but NASA's research and engineering feats share a stronger, more immediate link to the public through improvements such as quiet aircraft engines; stronger, lighter materials; improved biomedical devices; and advanced communications technology.

The best way to communicate the benefit of this research as well as the benefit of NASA's space exploration missions will be to emphasize the everyday gains NASA's engineering and scientific discovery have yielded. Taking this immediate approach rather than explicating the more theoretical process of achieving each discovery should make NASA's function seem more relevant. Journalists and, consequently, the public, often fail to recognize the significance of NASA's work because researchers do not connect their work to its impact on everyday life. A probe, for instance, might discover evidence that water once existed on Mars, but this news has little influence on the public unless researchers communicate the application of this discovery to ecological research on Earth. While a copious description of the experimental process is necessary in the scientific community to evaluate research, this emphasis on procedure is of little interest to the public or the media. Emphasizing the everyday benefits and applications of research removes this undue focus on procedure.

As Case A concluded, the scientific community must accept that public funding is increasingly replaced by private funding and emphasize the commercial aspects of its research accordingly. Likewise, NASA researchers, who receive their funding from the public, should emphasize the commercial and practical aspects of their research in order to secure this public support.

The secrecy and security issues that tend to undermine NASA's communication with the public are easily circumvented. NASA cannot afford to be perceived as an organization involved in any type of "cover-up." As such, NASA officials should be very cautious when dealing with the media and the public in order to avoid such a perception.

NASA should also open its centers to provide more opportunities for public viewing and interaction without compromising the present level of security. Most agency laboratories have visitors' centers, but in many cases, these centers are small and very poorly publicized. They are often built within the center's gates, making them invisible to the general public. By expanding these visitors' centers and working to make their existence better known to the public, NASA will promote public interest in its research and exploration.

The media truly provides the gateway for NASA contact with the public. By promoting a professional custom of media contact among its researchers, eliminating scientific language barriers, and removing Cold War vestiges of secrecy issues, NASA will favorably address three factors that significantly undermine its relations with the media and, subsequently, the public.

2. Improve the Publicity of NASA Outreach Efforts
NASA has an abundance of outreach programs designed to directly connect NASA staff and researchers with the public. As the case study "Under African Skies: The Cosmos Education Project" demonstrated, simple educational and outreach initiatives tend to have a high impact on a small scope. Formal NASA outreach programs have the potential to achieve this high impact on a much wider scope. While the Cosmos Education Project was limited by the sheer number of schools that the team could visit in the allotted time, NASA outreach efforts involve not only visiting schools but providing information and training for teachers. These initiatives can be extremely potent, as even a handful of teachers can spread the information to and boost interest in hundreds of students. While agency-wide initiatives address the basic educational goals of the organization, each individual NASA center participates in a large variety of outreach programs including internships, scholarships, and field trip visitations.

The difficulty of NASA's outreach is not that quality educational programs and information are unavailable, but that the existence of these efforts is not known to the public. There is no NASA database that connects interested users to all the public programs sponsored by the agency and its individual centers. The Cosmos Education Project was successful because its members directly and personally approached the schools they planned to visit. NASA programs do not make this effort to actively engage the administrators and educators of schools and other educational institutions. Rather, the information is simply posted and made available to those who choose to search for it. Most educators and administrators are too involved in other classroom and curricular activities to spend time searching for such educational programs.

A similar problem exists in NASA's programs to provide information to the general public. A significant portion of the public is interested in NASA's space exploration efforts and would enjoy learning more about the agency's activities, and NASA even has the resources to readily provide this information. Despite their prevalence, however, most of the public interested in NASA research does not access these resources. NASA information is disorganized and poorly publicized. No single internet database contains even a majority of this information, and printed documents and articles about NASA activities are scattered throughout libraries, periodicals, and the Internet. Seeking this information is simply too time-consuming and too inefficient for the general public.

NASA should redirect its efforts from designing new educational programs to better organizing and publicizing its existing resources Most NASA centers have an Office of Educational Programs, but educational initiatives are too often scattered over other offices in areas such as astrobiology, planetary science, and public affairs.
Combining all NASA educational initiatives into one office, however, would be inefficient. The NASA employees who initiate these educational initiatives often have other responsibilities of higher priority in their departments. If their programs were transferred to another office, they would be unable to transfer with them and their guidance would be lost as the programs would fall under new management without the support of individuals who are most acquainted with them. Additionally, it benefits the entire agency to have researchers involved with educational programs. Moving all of its programs into one bureau would create one office of employees highly specialized in educational programs while simultaneously removing the benefits of participation in these programs from the rest of the organization. Finally, the educational community would benefit from NASA programs that involve the principal investigators and other individuals actively employed in scientific careers. Replacing these individuals with educational representatives diminishes this favorable return.

Instead, NASA should create an office responsible for the organization and publicity of outreach programs. These programs would still be operated under their original departments, but the new office will ensure that these programs are presented to the public in a simple and direct manner.

Informing the public of NASA's outreach programs will revitalize interest in the space program both inside and outside the educational community. Expanded programs will better inform teachers of NASA's activities, resulting in better informed students. And among the general public, those who wish to learn more about NASA will have the opportunity to do so easily.

3. Promote NASA as a national and international endeavor
Perhaps more than any other government agency, NASA has the potential to inspire pride in the American public. As Case B, "The Apollo Program: A History of Support" demonstrated, the successful Apollo XI mission became a source of national pride. This pride was not spontaneously created, however; it was the product of a concerted government effort that included President Kennedy's famous declaration "We choose to go to the moon," NASA's depiction of Neil Armstrong as an American hero, and a Cold War atmosphere that spurred Americans to place their flag on the moon before the Soviets did the same.

Case D, "The Strategic Defense Initiative," showed that the federal government could use foreign policy concerns to promote public support for a space-related goal. The ongoing nuclear crisis of the Cold War seemed to mandate the initiative. Although many criticized the program for its cost and potential to disrupt the "balance of terror" between the United States and the Soviet Union, the progress and continued support of the program up through the collapse of the USSR indicates that the public generally considered a space-based missile defense system a necessity of national security.

"The International Space Station: An Analysis of Outreach and Promotion" showed that Congress and the public could support a project that met a united foreign policy need. While the Apollo Program and Strategic Defense Initiative were government responses to perceived foreign policy threats, the International Space Station addressed the need for international cooperation after the Cold War.
NASA will always have the potential to be the object of American pride as it was in 1969 and to be the beacon for hope of future triumphs. The agency should therefore promote space exploration as a national endeavor. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the nation should be encouraged to recognize space exploration as a victory over terrorism. Space exploration stands as an example of what can be achieved with the scientific knowledge, communication, and economic efficiency of a free society. Promoting NASA's work as an American achievement enables the public and the world to see the continued strength of the nation while aiding the space program with public interest and support.

At the same time, however, NASA's international efforts have progressed far beyond those of 1969. The International Space Station is the supreme example of this achievement. The product of a collaborative effort between NASA, the Russian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, and Japan, the International Space Station, despite its severe cost overruns, acts today as a functional symbol of international unity in space. In its Mars Exploration Program, NASA has cooperated with European partners to prepare probes such as the Mars Express.

Today, Americans can take pride in NASA's efforts toward international unity in the same way that they took pride in NASA's victory over the Soviet Union in the space race. The government must promote this sense of national pride, however. The nation's leaders should use NASA as an example of American efforts to foster unity abroad. Pride in NASA as a national achievement and as an international goal are not mutually exclusive. Although NASA declared victory over the Soviet Union in the 1969 space race, promoting the agency as a national goal today works toward a victory against ignorance and strife, not another world power. While the Cold War pitted two cultures against each other, today's world is plunged in a war of civilization against chaos. Fostering international unity through the space program promotes both our national goals and our international hopes. America's leaders can promote the space program by revitalizing the public's passion in domestic pride through NASA's achievements.

4. Personalize NASA employees
Among the Cold War relics of the scientific community is the stereotype of the engineer. The stereotypical engineer has a variety of outer characteristics such as thick glasses and a pocket protector, but more important than these are the qualities that the public generally associates with engineers. The scientific community is oft perceived as elitists who have difficulty communicating in everyday language, individuals of extraordinary intelligence who accomplish feats that are impossible for the average person, and researchers who are social failures outside of the laboratory.

These stereotypical images of scientists and engineers damage the relationship between science and the public in two major ways. In the educational community, students who are exposed to this traditional image of scientists become less likely to pursue careers in science and engineering. Students are taught from an early age that scientists spend most of their time in the laboratory and communicate with each other only through the cryptic language of scientific jargon. The perception that scientific concepts are difficult to understand leads them to think science is much harder than it is, further discouraging them from studying a technical field.
In the public, these images of scientists and engineers increase the perception of elitism that surrounds the technical community. Members of the public are less likely to support scientific work that they cannot understand, especially when it seems that many discoveries are significant only to other scientists.
It is essential that NASA present its researchers and employees as socially adept people. Members of the public should be able to relate their own experiences with those of NASA's workers.

NASA, like any other successful enterprise, is made up of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. True, NASA is rocket scientists and astronauts . . . and so much more. A closer look reveals that it is a rich microcosm of American society. Yes, it has scientists and engineers, but it also has business managers, food service workers, lawyers, electricians, accountants, secretaries, police officers, etc. - each with an important role, each with a community of "colleagues" outside the Agency, and each with stories to tell that potentially can bring NASA back to Earth."

The public should recognize the extraordinary nature of NASA's work, but realize that these extraordinary achievements are accomplished by ordinary people committed to their work.

NASA should alter its existing outreach programs to incorporate more of its scientific and technical personnel-more principal investigators, astronauts, and technicians. Contact between these personnel and the public will draw closed the gap between NASA and the public through shared experience and mutual understanding.