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NASA Excels At Hiding Its Good News About The Value Of Space Research

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
August 18, 2021
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NASA Excels At Hiding Its Good News About The Value Of Space Research

Keith’s note: The annual ISSRDC – International Space Station Research And Development Conference has had a series of technical session this week – from 16-18 August. If you go to Twitter no one seems to be tweeting anything about what is being said about the capability and potential of the International Space Station. In the first portion of this year’s ISSRDC earlier this month NIH Director Francis Collins did an amazing conversation/interview with ISS Astronaut (and actual research biologist) Kate Rubins. They touched on a variety of cutting edge things that NASA is doing on ISS including CRISPR – a technique that allows unprecedented insight into how the genetics of living systems works.
No NASA hype needed – this is actually, no kidding, cutting edge stiff – and NASA is doing it – in orbit. NASA has tried for years to get visibility and parity with NIH – now they have. But you’d never know it. NASA could have promoted video of this interview, posted a transcript etc. But no. They let it fade away. Now, less than 2 weeks later the detailed sessions where things like CRISPR are being discussed and NASA – HEOMD, SMD, PAO, ISSPO and ISSNL have gone out of their individual and collective way to ignore ISSRDC’s technical sessions.
Today, this article “International Space Station experiment expands DNA research toolkit using CRISPR” from NASA JSC appeared on Eurekalert. But you cannot find it on the JSC home page, HEOMD’s NASA ISS home page, SMD’s NASA Biological & Physical Sciences page, or anywhere else that I can find. They did not send this out to news media by email. And when I go to JSC to re-subscribe to their press releases (thinking that maybe I am missing things) the address they tell everyone to use to subscribe to news releases does not even exist.
Are there any more ways NASA can make it harder for people to know what they do? If so, please let me know.

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