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Dueling NASA Websites Update

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
August 28, 2017
Dueling NASA Websites Update

NASA’s Next Mars Mission to Investigate Interior of Red Planet, Lockheed Martin
“More information about InSight is online at:
https://www.nasa.gov/insight
https://insight.jpl.nasa.gov/

Keith’s note: Here we go again. NASA has deliberately created – and pays to maintain – two official mission websites – this time, for Mars InSight. NASA is paying twice for this. I’d ve willing to bet that a FOIA request would show that the duplication costs in terms of website contractor personnel would amount to several hundred thousand dollars over the course of the mission. This is not new wastefulness on NASA’s part: the Mars 2020 Rover already has three official BASA mission websites: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/, https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mars-2020/, and https://www.nasa.gov/mars2020. Every few years I ask NASA SMD about this. Someone says that they’ll look into it. Tick tock – nothing changes. The real answer is stove piping: NASA cannot really tell its field centers (or JPL) what to do and they go off and do their own thing regardless of whether someone else is already dong it. The field centers and JPL want people to think of them when it comes to NASA – instead of NASA.gov. But NASA HQ wants a unified way for people to find mission information so they set up a duplicate set of mission websites. Try as they may, these dueling sites are never totally in synch – and one is almost always out of sate with respect to the other. Let’s #MakeNASAConfusingAgain
NASA’s Inability To Speak With One Voice Online, earlier post (2011)
“Probably the most blatant example whereby NASA simply cannot make its mind up as to where an official mission website is has to do with Hubble – here are the official websites: http://hubble.nasa.gov/, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html, http://hubblesite.org/, http://heritage.stsci.edu/, http://www.nasa.gov/hubble, and http://www.spacetelescope.org/. And NASA Hubble press releases typically offer 3 links – on three different official Hubble websites – for the same image.”
Why Does NASA Maintain Three (Four) Different MSL Websites?, earlier post (2013)
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 Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

11 responses to “Dueling NASA Websites Update”

  1. fcrary says:
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    I suppose it could be worse. At least the PI is at JPL. Otherwise, there would be three web pages (NASA, JPL since they manage the Mars program and one at the PI’s home institution.) But if you want to get rid of the redundancy, I think it’s better to start at the top. The NASA (or NASA headquarters) web page is furthest from the people who know the details and can provide content, and now when updates are needed. The PI’s home institution is probably closest to those details.

    • Brian Dunbar says:
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      That’s an interesting perspective. The material on http://www.nasa.gov originates with the science team and includes plenty of detail, usually at the behest of the PI and team. I don’t think the public loses out there. We definitely only post a small percentage of any mission’s material on NASA’s main site, but the traffic numbers and customer satisfaction ratings we’ve got bear out that for most people that’s enough. (We also have the most robust infrastructure for high-traffic events like planetary encounters.) Links to the project site seem to work for those who want more information. From that perspective, I think the dual sites work. My preference would be to only include one URL in material aimed at the general public or media, but I don’t make that decision.

      • kcowing says:
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        We both know that NASA HQ PAO, the mission directorates, field centers, and mission teams all have their own idea how a website should look and HQ’s ability to manage the agency is often rather limited. JPL can do more or less what they want to and HQ can’t stop them. Having multiple websites without a compelling reason to do so is duplicative and a waste of taxpayer dollars. But that is not a priority at NASA so the stove piping continues.

      • fcrary says:
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        I think the level of detail is higher on the PI or mission-hosted web sites, but for most people, I can see how the nasa.gov pages are enough. But I was also thinking of changes and new results. For a PI-led mission with a web page hosted at the PI’s university, the PI can get content changed or added by walking down the hall and telling someone (probably a student) to do it. For the nasa.gov pages, the same changes (as I understand the process) involve more steps and going through more people. It isn’t clear how many scientists bother, except when they notice something major.

  2. Michael Spencer says:
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    How do these ‘plans’ fit in with the story reported at spaceflightnow.com about a sample return by the end of the 20s?

    I have to think that one mission, working with Mr. Musk,and involving a crew, would be far more effective and less costly.

    I never really understood the anxiety about a sample return. Yes, I know that much more can be gained when the rocket are in a lab. But such a mission might predate human landing by a decade or so; funding sample return would impact the eventual landing as well as producing tech that doesn’t support human landing.

    Or, send a better remote lab to Mars?

    #keepNASAconfusing

    • Bill Housley says:
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      Well, hw and tech shakedown needs to happen pre-Mars. The problem is that the shakedown mission ideas, with SLS launch cost attached, are never worth the price.

      As for multiple websites…in my experience outside of NASA, but with and within government is that empire building/maintaining, combined with access and different information objectives seems to breed this sort of thing within any large organization.

    • fcrary says:
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      InSight has nothing to do with a sample return. It’s exclusively about the internal structure of Mars. Much of what we know about the Earth’s interior comes from seismometry and geothermal heat flux. We don’t have similar measurements of Mars. My main concern is that the results from a single site may be ambiguous (or require unrealistic assumptions to interpret.)

      For the sample return, the last planetary decadal survey called for three missions (only one of which was within the decade it was chartered to consider…) All would have to be flagship-level missions. One would land, collect and catch samples. The next would land next to the catch, pick them up and put them into Mars orbit. The final one would pick the samples up from orbit and return them to Earth (probably using electric propulsion.) The Mars 2020 rover is basically a descoped and modified version of the decadal survey’s MAX-C sample collection rover.

      I’m not going to start in on the value of (or lack thereof) sample returns. Especially not given the small mass and number of samples, the fact that they come from a single site and the fact that there is no opportunity to go back and collect more samples based on the analysis of the first set.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        I wasn’t clear.

        If we are going to put people on Mars, then go forth with the appropriate technological development. Apply all NASA Mars-dollars to the human mission. Sending up to three flagships to Mars is going to teach us—what? What will we learn from such a project that would have the slightest impact on the human Mission to Mars? None whatsoever. And as you point out in your final graf, a few grams from a single site will tell us—what? It will tell us something about a single site. Fine.

        Silly doesn’t even describe these missions, at least in the context of a desire to send people there.

        • fcrary says:
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          I’ve always wanted some terrestrial geologists to weigh in on the value of such a Mars sample return. In any case…

          This was originally about a lack of coordination among NASA web pages. But you’re pointing out a broader problem of coordination between NASA directorates. The science directorate can’t assume human spaceflight will land astronauts on Mars. They certainly can’t make assumptions about when that would happen or what the astronauts would do on the surface. The people involved talk to each other. But when a National Academies report more-or-less defines a sample return to be the highest priority in planetary science (and even if I disagree with that), the head of the science mission directorate can’t just assume and hope human spaceflight will do it for him.

          That may sound awkward or uncoordinated, but that’s how NASA is set up. It would be different if there were a NASA “everything we do related to Mars” directorate with divisions of science and human spaceflight. But then there would be probably be a lack of coordination between Mars and non-Mars planetary science work.

  3. A_J_Cook says:
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    The JPL sites stay active through government shut downs. Is this because it is maintained by Caltech people?