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Space & Planetary Science

Sometimes Fun Things Just Happen By Coincidence

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
September 28, 2015
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Sometimes Fun Things Just Happen By Coincidence

Did NASA time its Mars announcement to coincide with ‘The Martian’?, Yahoo
“Talk about some otherworldly timing … or was it? Did NASA time its Mars announcement to coincide with the film’s release? “No, the timing was dictated by the publication of the Nature Geoscience article, which was released today,” Laurie Cantillo, a NASA spokeswoman, told Yahoo News. It would be a bit hard to imagine the space agency sitting on major Mars news in order for it to collide with a Hollywood movie.”
Keith’s note: 1. The research paper was submitted to Nature Geoscience months ago and the EPSC sessions were organized months ago as well – before any release date was chosen for “The Martian”
2. The release date for the movie was set months ago by movie marketing people who have no idea what this announcement is even about.
Were NASA and “The Martian” wrong to leverage this coincidence with cross-promotions? Heavens no. They have been cross-promoting this movie and NASA exploration activities for months so they’d look rather lame – and kinda stupid – if they did not take the time to cross-promote this blatantly obvious big news about Mars when NASA announced the press event last week. Given the glacial pace at which science papers crawl toward release and NASA’s quirky way of dealing with embargoed science results there’s no way any Hollywood marketing person could – or would – adjust a movie release to an indeterminate and ever shifting date in the future.
NASA PAO and “The Martian” are paying a lot of attention to each other right now – each for their own reasons. That said, the net result (one would hope) of this interaction is that an immense audience has a great time at the movies and that they leave the theater with something inspiring lingering in their minds about exploration.

Oh yes: this video was just posted on Twitter – a salute to NASA from Matt Damon.

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

5 responses to “Sometimes Fun Things Just Happen By Coincidence”

  1. mfwright says:
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    and the Moon was red like Mars last night.

  2. ThomasLMatula says:
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    On the other hand, it is lucky that the House is having hearings on the next decade of Astrobiology research tomorrow…

    http://www.spaceref.com/cal

  3. Brian Thorn says:
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    The Martian was on the books for a November release for most of the last year. Then it moved to mid-October sometime early this summer and finally settled on October 2. It looks like 20th Century Fox got cold feet and moved it away from in-between Spectre and Hunger Games.