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Why Does NASA Maintain Three (Four) Different MSL Websites?

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 17, 2013
Filed under , , , , ,

Mars Rover Curiosity’s Team to Receive Space Foundation Award
“JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information about the mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl , http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.”

Keith’s note: Why does NASA spend money to maintain three different MSL websites – websites that do not even link to one another? I can (sort of) understand if there is a turf war of sorts going on (there is) but this press release admits by default that NASA is incapable of coordinating its websites. At a time when Congress is looking for examples of taxpayer dollars being wasted, this is just begging to be investigated – especially when NASA advertises the fact that it is maintaining 3 websites simultaneously. I hear constant complaints from within NASA that they do not have enough funds to maintain their websites. When I see ongoing nonsense like this, those complaints begin to ring hollow. It looks like NASA has more than enough website money.
Oh yes – There’s also http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ which is the same as http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/. That makes 4 website addresses – one of the multiple websites actually has a duplicate. Why?
To summarize: JPL runs two MSL websites that overlap/duplicate one another but don’t cross link – and JPL has an extra copy of one of these sites for good measure. Yet none of these JPL sites interact with the site at NASA HQ – and yet they all cater to the same audience. According to formal NASA policy, this is not supposed to happen. But it still does. NASA enacts NPDs and other policies and then ignores these same policies. Why bother having procedures if they are simply ignored?
Why does NASA need multiple websites for the same mission?, earlier post
NASA’s Tangled Human Spaceflight Web Presence, earlier post
NASA’s Sprawling Web Presence, earlier post
NASA’s Inability To Speak With One Voice Online, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

16 responses to “Why Does NASA Maintain Three (Four) Different MSL Websites?”

  1. Jafafa Hots says:
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    It’s not just waste, it undermines the mission of getting the information out.
    Whenever I’ve wanted to read the latest from a mission, I’ve found that the LAST place you want to try is a NASA website.
    You end up spending forever trying to find things, they never are where they were the last time you looked, or so it seems, and then you find out you’re on the wrong NASA site for that mission, etc.
    I’ve found myself in the past staring at a site for a current mission that has its last status update weeks or months out of date.

  2. Rusty says:
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    I’ve been following all four sites since they each started and it is frustrating because they tend to have different information and images.  So if you are REALLY interested in the project like I am, you need to go to all four sites to get the truly ‘latest’ information.

  3. meekGee says:
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    Well one (http://www.nasa.gov/mission… is a member of the per-mission pages that HQ maintains.  Perfectly Legit – as the top-level organization, they maintain an “equal” view of each mission.

    The other two are maintained by the mission owner (JPL). Legit too.  It’s their mission, they can do what they want.  As was pointed out, the two sites are aimed at different people.

    The two URL’s are a complete non-issue. Happens all the time.

    If you dig deeper, many science instruments on missions have their own pages as well (E.g. http://hirise.lpl.arizona.e

    I find the outreach by the MSL mission to have been terrific so far.  

    • kcowing says:
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      “Its their mission they can do what they want”?  You are just part of the problem. NASA HQ tries to stop this – but they can’t.

  4. kcowing says:
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    Its all the same material. Written for the same audience. NASA HQ tries to stop this – but they can’t.

    • Helen Simpson says:
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      I agree completely with Keith. It’s the same stuff, and even aside from wasting money, it’s just annoying not to be able to do one-stop-shopping for Curiosity info. These are clearly all are websites maintained by different management stacks within the agency. The nasa.gov/msl one is the HQ site, from the program people. The JPL sites represent the project people. That functional division, between HQ and center operations, is unfortunately really hard to patch. But having multiple sites from JPL is kind of ridiculous.

      And no, the HQ site isn’t “aimed at professional geologists”. Professional geologists don’t go to websites like these to get their info. If anything, they’d go to the individual instrument websites, which aren’t even considered here. (Nope, these public websites don’t even clearly link to those instrument websites, as far as I can see.)

      As to being aimed at different sets of readers, I think we’re looking at a DC Post – DC Times kind of distinction. It’s the same stuff, but with different editorial perspectives. Diversity is meaningful in the public press, and should be encouraged, but is very much not so in an agency web presence. In the public press, it’s about having different voices. In the case of NASA, it’s about the left hand not talking to the right hand.

  5. mycroft_holmes says:
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    Let’s set this issue straight. Mike Shupp is right — it’s not three different websites for the rover mission. One is the mission’s pages on the NASA website, one is a collection of mission links and info on the JPL website, and one is the Curiosity mission pages on the Mars Exploration Program website. All of these sites have good reason to exist (and to exist separately) and to share info about the mission. They all coordinate with and defer to the main NASA.gov site as the lead for breaking news. They do link to each other (although, admittedly, not always in the most clear and obvious ways). It does lead to the logjam of URLs at the end of press releases that you mention, but the alternative is that far fewer people would know about the related sites. So yes, lots of missions maintain a separate, focused mission website, and pages on their home institution’s site, in addition to pages on http://www.nasa.gov. It allows them to dive deeper into the mission and develop additional resources with greater flexibility than if they only had the NASA website. The NASA site is fine, and as NASAWatch has reported, there are plans to update it in the near future to make it better, but I know I’d hate it if it was the only place to get info and engaging content about NASA. For example, look at what a great educational resource the HubbleSite is (http://hubblesite.org)! And if an instrument team for a planetary mission is located at a university and receives NASA funding, why shouldn’t they be allowed to have website that focuses on their part of the mission? And wouldn’t it be silly if you went to the JPL site and couldn’t find the images, videos and press releases related to Curiosity? Look at the additional depth and character it adds to the various programs. Each has its own identity within the larger agency. Ultimately NASA HQ has oversight of NASA-funded websites and can direct them if adjustments need to be made. Here’s the thing: it is standard practice for NASA projects to spend around one percent of their budgets on Education & Public Outreach (EPO). Missions are required to demonstrate to NASA HQ that they are responsibly allocating those funds to support a balanced EPO program. See my point? They are only using funds already budgeted for EPO. So no mission is misusing taxpayer money making websites. Having only one channel to by which to communicate is the *old* way of doing things. It is absolutely the right thing for NASA’s programs to utilize multiple channels on the web, including social media, to get the message out. And to try new things. Not all of the websites will be perfect, but on the whole NASA does a great job sharing and inspiring. If I recall correctly, NASA enjoys the best public sentiment of any federal agency — one of the key reasons for this is that they use multiple paths to communicate in creative, engaging ways. It’s part of NASA’s charter to share what it does with the public, but we must remember that lots of institutions are working together on NASA programs. I maintain the agency serves the public much better by not forcing all communications to come from a single website run from NASA Headquarters.

    • kcowing says:
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      MSL is in direct violation of the NASA Policy Directive in this regard. Don’t believe me? Look it up – and check with NASA HQ – top floor – they are not happy about this duplicity of websites either – and they make the rules that the rest of the agency is bound to follow – or not.

      • Richard H. Shores says:
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        It is the typical turf wars thing going on and HQ needs to get their head out of the sand and stop this. Doubt it will ever happen.

  6. mycroft_holmes says:
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    Let’s set this issue straight. Mike Shupp right — it’s not three different websites for the rover mission. One is the mission pages on the NASA website, one is a collection of mission links and info on the JPL website, and one is the Curiosity mission pages on the Mars Exploration Program website. All of these sites have good reason to exist (and to exist separately) and to share info about the mission. They all coordinate with and defer to the main NASA.gov site as the lead for breaking news. They do link to each other (although, admittedly, not always in the most clear and obvious ways). It does lead to the logjam of URLs at the end of press releases that you mention, but the alternative is that far fewer people would know about the related sites.

    So yes, lots of missions maintain a separate, focused mission website, and pages on their home institution’s site, in addition to pages on http://www.nasa.gov. It allows them to dive deeper into the mission and develop additional resources with greater flexibility than if they only had the NASA website. The NASA site is fine, and there are plans to update it in the near future to make it better, but I know I’d hate it if it was the only place to get info and engaging content about NASA. 

    For example, look at what a great resource the HubbleSite is (http://hubblesite.org)! And if an instrument team for a planetary mission is located at a university and recieves NASA funding, why shouldn’t they be allowed to have website that focuses on their part of the mission? And wouldn’t it be silly if you went to the JPL site and couldn’t find the images, videos and press releases related to Curiosity? Look at the additional depth and character it adds to the various programs. Each has its own identity within the larger agency. Ultimately NASA HQ has oversight of NASA-funded websites and can direct them if adjustments need to be made.

    Here’s the thing: it is standard practice for NASA projects to spend around one percent of their budgets on Education & Public Outreach (EPO). Missions are required to demonstrate to NASA HQ that they are responsibly allocating those funds to support a balanced EPO program. See my point? They are only using funds already budgeted for EPO. So no mission is misusing taxpayer money making websites. Having only one channel to by which to communicate is the *old* way of doing things. It is absolutely the right thing for NASA’s programs to utilize multiple channels on the web, including social media, to get the message out. And to try new things. Not all of the websites will be perfect, but on the whole NASA does a great job sharing and inspiring.

    If I recall correctly, NASA enjoys the best public sentiment of any federal agency — one of the key reasons for this is that they use multiple paths to communicate in creative, engaging ways.

    It’s part of NASA’s charter to share what it does with the public, but we must remember that lots of institutions are working together on NASA programs. I maintain the agency serves the public much better by not forcing all communications to come from a single website run from NASA Headquarters.

    • kcowing says:
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      MSL is in direct violation of the NASA Policy Directive in this regard. Don’t believe me? Look it up – and check with NASA HQ – top floor – they are not happy about this duplicity of websites either – and they make the rules that the rest of the agency is bound to follow – or not.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      mh,

      You can find all kinds of arguments for and against what currently exists, and it is all mostly just opinion.  But the one thing that I don’t see how anyone can defend is the multiple entry points — to get at everything you want to know to keep up to date, you basically have to start your browse/search three different times, and then amalgamate the content somehow in your mind.

      If the various contributors want/provide their own content, as you suggest, fine, but make it all accessible from the same single top-level URL, which, I would say, should be assigned by HQ, thereby giving them back the element of control that they currently don’t seem to have.  This would also allow for consistency in the top-level URLs so that it’s easier to find the main entry point for a mission/program, and then everything (public) for the mission/program is in menued sections under the mission/program URL, which is one level below http://www.nasa.gov.

      If they were starting over, this is the logical and most functional way to structure things, and there’s no reason why they can’t migrate to this system now.  It would put the top-level authority and control back with HQ and IT where is belongs.

  7. bobhudson54 says:
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    This is an example of the redundancy in spending done by the Government. Other agencies,besides NASA, are doing the same thing. CPA s would have a field day if they were allowed to scan their books.Instead of increasing taxes on its citizens, the government should cut spending. Reducing redundancy or eliminating all-together would achieve this and make the government run more efficient.