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Commercialization

NASA Wallops Plays Games With The News Media Once Again

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 17, 2018
Filed under

Keith’s note: Great commercial space news. RocketLab is coming to NASA Wallops in Virginia to do commercial space launches. You’d think that all parties involved would want as much media present as possible – especially Virginia-based space media (like NASAWatch). Guess again. I first learned about this event, held on a NASA facility, staffed by NASA personnel, announced after it was underway on social media and broadcast on a NASA TV channel when I saw mention of it on Twitter. NASA Wallops PAO sent me nothing in advance. I caught the tail end of the webcast and discovered that there was also a phone bridge for media who are offsite to dial in to ask questions. No one at NASA Wallops PAO told me about that either. This is not the first time Wallops PAO has played this sort of games with me. I have sent an email to NASA PAO and Wallops personnel asking why NASAWatch was excluded from the advance notice and access provided to other news media. Until/unless I get a response (normally I get no response from Wallops) I am torn with ascribing this to incompetence – or spite- on Wallops’ part given that this happens to me with some regularity.
Although I had no advance notice of this event, this is the question that popped into my head for RocketLab: “You are going to be doing a lot of launches at Wallops – and they do a lot of suborbital launches for student projects. Is your company looking to work with NASA and M.A.R.S. to provide additional opportunities for students and interns in Virginia to learn about space?”.

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

4 responses to “NASA Wallops Plays Games With The News Media Once Again”

  1. fcrary says:
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    Do you really find this shocking or surprising? NASA Watch is fairly critical of NASA, or at least NASA management decisions and policies. NASA’s PIO and media relations people are paid to make NASA look good. I think it’s obvious that they favor news sources which say good things about NASA and try to keep more critical news sources out of the loop. I don’t think that is fair, transparent, honest or appropriate. But I also don’t think it is surprising.

  2. ITGrouch says:
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    I think a meeting with the director at Wallops is in order to put an end to this nonsense.