Keith’s note: According to Astrobiology Spinoff: NASA Funded Research Used Tardigrade Proteins To Make A Human Health Breakthrough “University of Wyoming researchers’ study of how microscopic creatures called tardigrades survive extreme conditions has led to a major breakthrough that could eventually make life-saving treatments available to people where refrigeration isn’t possible.” NASA funded this research. And there is an important “spinoff”. And you will never hear about it from NASA Public Affairs because they either do not know how to tell the story and/or do not care to take the time to bring together disparate parts of the agency to make a coherent story. More below.

Keith’s note: NASA PAO posted this release today: NASA’s Webb Spots Swirling, Gritty Clouds on Remote Planet. Really cool stuff. Webb can do this amazing observation in just a few hours. You’d think that NASA PAO would want as many people as possible to see this – i.e. on NASA.gov etc. Well they posted the release including this line : “The team’s paper, entitled “The JWST Early Release Science Program for Direct Observations of Exoplanetary Systems II: A 1 to 20 Micron Spectrum of the Planetary-Mass Companion VHS 1256-1257 b,” will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on March 22.” But there is no link to an open access version of the paper. Guess what – it is here https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.00620 and it was posted on 11 February 2023 – more than a month ago. I have told SMD PAO multiple times where to find these things such that the hundreds of millions of people who pay the taxes to do this stuff can share in the discovery – but they seem to be uninterested in taking 60 seconds to go look for the paper. Why is NASA PAO so negligent in spreading its own good news?

Keith’s note: According to NASA PAO: “NASA has selected PCI Productions LLC of Huntsville, Alabama, to manage communication services for all agency centers including headquarters, as well as its mission directorates, to enable the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of NASA information. … “This is one major step in our overall procurement strategy for communications that will allow us to more efficiently and effectively use the amazing capability of NASA communications organizations to connect the world with the agency’s missions,” said Johnny Stephenson, deputy associate administrator for Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington.” FYI Johnny Stephenson spent most of his career at NASA MSFC – also in Huntsville, Alabama. On his Twitter account @jfstephenson1 he lists his position as “Director/Strategic Analysis & Comm at NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center, Real Estate investor, Sports fan”. He has 106 followers. This is the number two Comms guy for all of NASA – yet he can’t even make his social media account accurate. Oh yes, the new NASA PAO contractor @PciProductions only has 7 followers on Twitter. Let the world-class outreach goodness commence.

Keith’s update: NASA HQ PAO has informed me that my FOIA request for CASIS documents is now being processed. PAO tells me that the “media” status of NASAWatch is not an issue. The NASA FOIA office has initiated the search for what I have requested and will work with me on the details once FOIA at HQ and JSC get a handle on the size of what is found. I’ll […]

Ground control to NASA TV: liven up, LA Times “The man in charge of Washington, D.C.-based NASA Television, executive producer Fred Brown, acknowledges that the network is light-years from where it could be if it had the money and a mandate to properly entertain the masses. But that was never the point, he said. The network was launched in the early 1970s strictly to provide “real-time mission coverage” for NASA’s […]