Keith’s note: Yet another example of the global interest in space exploration – between Colombia and Poland – and yet they are half a world apart. Oh yes: note the logo on the boy’s hat. NASA’s reach is global and usually beyond its own understanding since the agency passes on capitalizing on innumerable soft power options to help empower the Artemis Generation – everywhere. The one glaring exception is the NASA Space Apps competition which is only promoted in a substantive way by some portions of NASA SMD – but not the rest of the agency (sadly). This is from A space camp’s cultural exchange, Science (subscription): “The camp’s instructors—including author C.O.D.—had come from Colombia to conduct research at Poland’s Analog Astronaut Training Center (AATC). As the head of the camp, which is run by AATC, I had invited them to share their knowledge with the campers. We worked together to translate the scientific concepts from Spanish to English to Polish. As we planned the lessons, they shared the Colombian traditions of integrating movement, art, music, and ancestral knowledge into scientific work. For example, one activity demonstrated how scientists are extracting the pigments from Colombian fruits and trying to incorporate them into green solvents that could be used to make organic solar panels. During a break, we played salsa music over a loudspeaker and encouraged the campers to dance.” More on NASA branding.

Keith’s note: According to a tweet by NASA SMD Nicky Fox the other day “Fun Friday night build – some tense moments when I managed to dislodge a critical piece in the sample arm gears but all good eventually! @LEGO_Group @NASAJPL @NASAPersevere and #Ingenuity in the house! @LaurieofMars you may be disappointed by the underside 😉🙃”. Too bad cool STEM education things like this conducted by two of the top female scientists running NASA – JPL Director Laurie Leshin and SMD AA Nicky Fox – go totally unnoticed by NASA Public Affairs, PAO AA Marc Etkind and Education AA Mike Kincaid. Don’t you have a Space Act Agreement LEGO? You used to have one. There is a NASA JPL Mars rover logo on the box that Nicky is holding. Gee, how did that get there? No mention of this outreach opportunity has been made by @NASA (74.9 million followers) or @NASAJPL (3.8 million followers). According to Local Community Engagement at LEGO “Our local community engagement program currently operates in 31 countries, and we are working hard to expand it even further.” Amazon is filled with NASA-themed LEGO products. More than 220 million LEGO sets are sold globally each year. You would think that someone in a position to make creative and strategic decisions would have a way to coordinate nascent outreach opportunities like this. NASA has one of the largest, most ubiquitous branding visibilities on Earth – and it is 100% positive, exiting, proactive, diverse – and hopeful. As such one would think that working with another equally visible entity (LEGO) would only result in a synergistic visibility for the common values shared by both. NASA can certainly get far greater reach than this. But the people responsible for doing so must have to want to see this happen. Oh yes another female leader at NASA Technology, Policy and Strategy AA Bhavya Lal is totally into LEGO as well. If NASA leadership is into the same thing as hundreds of million of people around the world isn’t this something to utilize as an outreach tool? Missed opportunities. Just sayin’.

Keith’s note: If you go to this Reddit post “People greeting Ukrainian soldiers in deoccupied town” on r/UkraineWarVideoReport you will see a video of Ukrainians greeting liberators. At the 00:57 mark you will see a young boy in a sweatshirt with a huge NASA logo come up to greet one of the soldiers. Later in the video you can see him walking with several of the soldiers. Even in a cruel war zone the NASA branding is prominent. What other American government agency can attest to such popularity other than perhaps the Peace Corps? If only NASA understood this. Video below:

Keith’s note: ExxonMobil TV commercial about Shiva Hafezi, a young woman (now an engineer) who was motivated as a student to strive for excellence by a chemistry teacher who had once worked at “NASA”. The use of “NASA” seems to be the ultimate qualifier of – and compliment for her teacher’s qualifications. The NASA brand, however inconsistently and inefficently used by NASA, still has some clear value and meaning to […]