NASA Publicity and Mars Polar Lander

We may never know what happened to the Mars Polar Lander and the pair of Deep Space 2 probes. Data sent before the attempted landing didn't indicate any problems with the spacecraft. Short of making contact with the vehicles, there is no way to retrieve any post-landing data.

For the weeks and months following the mission, attention will focus on mission planning and design, as well as on NASA policies in general. Congress will begin an oversite investigation; NASA will form its own internal team; and we might even see an outside, independent panel.

The investigation will be complicated because NASA is as much a political agency as it is a technology agency. Missions must meet both scientific and political goals. Often, politics are even more important than science.

To preserve its funding, NASA must seek out politically popular programs, and it must seek out as much publicity for these programs as possible. Unfortunately, science and publicity don't always mix very well.

Immediate Results

Within minutes of the projected landing time, major news organizations were already talking about another $165 million loss for NASA. NASA program managers were rapidly entering spin control mode. Program scientists, however, were almost nonchalant, claiming they had said all along they didn't expect to hear anything for at least a day or so.

Now, I followed this program fairly closely, and I can't remember hearing such a statement. I have no doubt it's true, but I also have no doubt NASA chose to play down this fact.

NASA chose to focus on the landing as the climax of the mission. Most of the science would occur later, but the landing was considered the "Big Event." After all, the clock on the Polar Lander Web site counted down to the landing, not the reception of the first signal.

Programs of this type usually don't have a single climactic event. For various reasons, though, that's what the public has come to expect, and that's what NASA must deliver to maximize its publicity.

Some of this expectation is the media's fault for focusing on the dramatic. What plays better on the evening news: a difficult landing on a distant planet, or the deployment of an antenna and the subsequent encoded signal?

Some of this expectation is the public's fault for demanding instant results. In the movies, there's always a precise countdown to a final event, but in real science programs the results often trickle in over hours or even days.

Finally, much of this expectation is NASA's fault for putting publicity ahead of public eduction, and education is one of its official missions. NASA does a decent job of explaining the technology behind its programs, but it fails to show the basic scientific process which drives these programs.

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