Keith’s note: I just did an interview on BBC World Service’s program “Outside Source” a few minutes ago about the stunning new imagery from Euclid. I used the stellar cartography scene from “Star Trek Generations” as my illustrative image (on radio). They’ll be playing this during the day and posting it online to a weekly audience of 364+ million. I emphasized how this is the sort of mission that has applicability to everyone everywhere – scientist or non-scientist alike. Meanwhile here is my [Audio] of the interview. I’ll post the BBC’s link later.

Keith’s note: I was just on Alaraby TV in Qatar talking about the recent discovery of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of super-earth exoplanet K2-18b by the Webb Space Telescope and what this means in terms of Astrobiology and the search for life in the universe. It is fun to not have to talk to jaded American TV. Surprise: People outside of our Americo-centric news bubble are interested in things we don’t seem to care much about. Among many other international networks, I have been on Alaraby, Al Arabiya, Alhurra, and Al Jazeera. Also, since I am being translated into Arabic in real time, it is fun since I used to be a professional American Sign Language interpreter (often on TV) and the translators like that I am good at parsing technical things for translation at a pace that facilitates translation – in real time. Keith’s fun aside, I get the clear impression that NASA has little – if any – interest in making people available to this vast viewing audience. I have asked NASA PAO about this in the past but they always declined to answer. To be certain, the viewership of these Arabic language networks overlaps – but the core audience is somewhere between 200-300 million located in over 150 countries. NASA has an astonishing soft power and branding reach and it rarely takes full advantage of it. This is one example. Baffling. Anyway: here’s the [Audio]

Keith’s note: On Friday I spoke spoke with Deutsche Welle several times about ESA’s Euclid mission and how it will search for answers regarding dark energy and dark matter in the universe. [Audio]. More information on the mission in online at SpaceRef: Euclid Telescope Poised to Investigate Mysteries of Cosmic Expansion. Update: I spoke with DW again on Saturday about successful launch of Euclid by SpaceX. [Audio] and then I was on Alhurra on Sunday talking about the mission as well. [Audio]

Keith’s note: Check out “Using Robotic Telescope-Based Observing Experiences to Boost STEM Enrollments and Majors on a National Scale“: “Funded by a $3M Department of Defense (DoD) National Defense Education Program (NDEP) award, we are developing and deploying on a national scale a follow-up curriculum to “Our Place In Space!”, or OPIS!, in which approx. 3,500 survey-level astronomy students are using our global network of “Skynet” robotic telescopes each year.” If NASA’s Education Office (or whatever goofy name they call it now) really stayed on top of all space and astronomy related STEM education stuff then they’d certainly be expected to have a willingness to showcase allied efforts outside of NASA. Well, not so much. I did a search for this project and NASA – on Google and NASA’s own website and turned up nothing. You’d think that NASA Education, the OIIR, SMD and whomever is involved with students, astronomy, and other government agencies, would see this as a “rising tide lifts all boats” thing in an “all of government” way. Guess again.

Keith’s note: On 8 April 2023 I appeared on Al Jazeera Arabic TV to talk about a giant black hole that is traveling through the universe and creating stars in its wake (story). Yet another TV show with an Arabic translator wherein I have to distill down a science story into words a general audience can get – via an Interpreter. Strangely You do not see NASA personnel on these networks with huge global audiences – especially when there is one Arabic speaking astronaut on the ISS and another heading up soon. You’d think that NASA PAO, SMD, HEOMD, or OIIR would want to get some soft power synergies going. Guess again. Audio.

Keith’s note: NASA just posted this press release “Hubble Unexpectedly Finds Double Quasar in Distant Universe“ which says “The results will be published in the April 5 journal Nature.” and points to this article behind a paywall which you can read/rent for $39.95 – unless you have already paid for access to this taxpayer-funded research (funded by NASA, NSF, NRAO, STSCI etc.) So if you want to see your tax dollars at work – and you do not subscribe to $200/year journals – then this PAO summary is all you get. Yet you can find the preprint of that paper online here – for free: “A close quasar pair in a disk–disk galaxy merger at z = 2.17“ and it is accessible anywhere on Earth – even on the ISS. It has been online since 22 September 2022. I have repeatedly told NASA SMD PAO (just a few weeks ago in fact) where and how to find these preprints – many of which come out the night before or the evening after a formal release. Some preprints are online and approved for publication well before then. The entire NASA-funded research community knows this since they are the ones who submit them to the preprint servers and want their research to be seen ASAP. But NASA Public Affairs seems to have a chronic lazy streak running through it wherein the least amount of effort expended is often more than enough to keep the taxpayers happy. (See my 22 March 2023 post “NASA PAO Does The Bare Minimum (Again) To Announce Another Discovery“) Update: Wednesday evening someone from PAO got around to checking to see if the link went to an open access article and then fixed it so that it does. Why they do not do this before publishing things – thus making people think that they have to pay – is baffling.

Keith’s note: I did a lot of TV today. One question that the French, Turkish, Qatari, and German hosts asked me today is why this is important to people – real people. I gave the usual answers about science, knowledge, and maybe a few technological benefits. But I realized that I need to do more homework. I *really* need to give good examples of actual relevance to this global audience. […]

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Gee, for someone who more that happily accepts the mantle of being Carl Sagan's heir apparent, this is probably one of the most discouraging things anyone could possibly say when it comes to inspiring people to look up at the night sky. Just sayin, Neil. https://t.co/T4WyFIePfz — NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) May 16, 2022

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