NASA Public Affairs Is Not Interested in Dawn or Ceres
Keith’s note: Dwayne Brown from NASA SMD PAO only gave trivial advance notice for media to register for a telecon regarding Dawn entering orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres. Dwayne sent a media advisory out at 12:56 pm ET for a 2:00 pm ET telecon – and only gave media 45 minutes to contact him for dial-in information. Smart move to send this out while half of the U.S. was eating lunch. Only 2 media actually dialed in to ask questions. Well done, Dwayne. Like you NASA people did not know within a millisecond – months in advance – when the spacecraft was going to arrive at Ceres such that you could have sent something out just a little bit earlier? And then you all wonder why the media doesn’t pay more attention to these things?
NASA’s PR reminds me of Hewlett-Packard.
It was said that HP would market sushi as cold dead raw fish.
One of the most mysterious and fascinating little worlds in the solar system and this is the best they can do?! Sheesh! Shame on them…
Federal government was closed yesterday and delayed opening today. Just saying!
I’m not sure how that would affect their ability to plan and announce a news conference weeks or months in advance of a known arrival date.
If the notification had been sent out two or three days earlier, this story probably wouldn’t exist. So it probably matters if only for that reason…
NASA is never going to get over the ‘lack of visibility’ thing if it doesn’t attempt to market it’s successes.
One tin-foil hat idea: I know that Dawn was reinstated after NASA tried to can the program. OSC actually offered the spacecraft to NASA at-cost to persuade them to reinstate it. Could it be that there are still some at HQ and at the various centres who resent the program for its resurrection or those who still believe it should never have flown at all? Dawn may actually be seen as an embarrassment rather than a success to some!
PAO probably just seems like any other job to the people working there – no actual passion for space or a grasp of the significance of events – just something to pay the bills.