[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

(meteorobs) Message from Philipp Schmid

Comments from Philipp Schmid: Because there was such a big number of mails about this topic I thought it may be of intrest for somebody on this list. Have fun and clea skys on the weekend.
Philipp Schmid

This article was forwarded to you from space.com -- http://www.space.com


 NASA Axes Popular Web Site, Space Science News 

 NASA announced Friday that it would permanently shut down the popular Space 
Science News web site, which over the past three years had interpreted more 
than 400 studies and discoveries for a wide audience of space enthusiasts. The 
site, at http://science.nasadot gov, will cease to operate Monday, Jan. 10.

A source told space.com that large numbers of messages, bemoaning the 
decision, flowed into the electronic mailboxes associated with the site on 
Friday. The announcement had been made by e-mail to more than 150,000 
subscribers of a newsletter tied to the site.

There are no other NASA programs in place to fill the void, but Space.com has 
learned that there is a chance that the site may be reactivated. It was 
unclear as of Friday how or whether that might occur. Meanwhile, it is clear 
that reinstating the project would require reassembling a team to run it.

The decision to kill Space Science News, operated by the Marshall Space 
Science Center, comes less than a month after the departure of science writer 
Dave Dooling, who had authored a healthy portion of the in-depth articles. 
"None of us wanted it to discontinue," Dooling said in a telephone interview 
Friday. "We had a lot of support in the lab. We really enjoyed working with 
the scientists."

The success of the site reached far beyond the lab, garnering more than 6 
million visits in 1999, a Webby award and a Popular Science 50 Best of the Web 
award. The articles, produced by Dooling, Tony Phillips (who doubled as a 
techie) and two interns, focused heavily on NASA researchers or work funded by 
NASA. They were read not only by scientists, but also by journalists as 
valuable background pieces for stories, and by the public as well. Those who 
ran Space Science News saw their audience as anyone interested in space 
science, including people who might read Scientific American or watch the 
popular Nova television program. The site's popularity "cut across demographic 
boundaries," Dooling said.

Space Science News' leader was John Horack, a gamma-ray astronomer and overall 
director of Science Communications Marshall. It was unclear Friday whether 
Horack has a job or not. "John tried very hard to keep it going," Dooling 
said. "Central management decided it was not an area where they wanted to put 
their resources."

In an opinion article written for space.com and published Nov. 19 as part of 
the Space Visions series, Horack and Rick E. Borchelt, former press secretary 
for science and technology in the Clinton White House, wrote of the need for 
scientists to improve their communication skills to more effectively reach the 
general public with their research results.

"As Federal research budgets stagnate or decline, and despite public clamor 
for more and better scientific information, communication of basic research 
results continues to rank among the lowest agency priorities, mortgaged 
against traditional public-relations activities to polish an agency’s image or 
control negative information flow to the press and public," Horack and 
Borchelt wrote.

"If new knowledge is generated but not communicated," the two argued, "only 
half the job has been done. This is a reflection of the transition of NASA 
from primarily an engineering organization used to help win the Cold War to a 
producer of new knowledge and technology in the National interest for the 21st 
century."

Space Science News, while clearly designed to promote NASA and its activities, 
did more. On occasion it served as photo album for professional and amateur 
pictures (and video footage) during an eclipse, and it was at times a 
clearinghouse for data and first-hand accounts of sightings during meteor 
showers.

And regardless of its goals, the science was always accurate, interesting, and 
well explained.

Archives from the project will be available at http://spacescience.com, a site 
run by Bishop Web Works. An associated web site known as Thursday's Classroom 
is not affected by the cut, sources said.

And Dooling, at least, will continue writing about space science research, 
having found a job in the public relations department of a separate program on 
microgravity at Marshall.

"I'm very fortunate," Dooling said. "I landed on my feet." 



http://www.space.com/space/business/nasa_science_dead_000107.html

To UNSUBSCRIBE from the 'meteorobs' email list, use the Web form at:
http://www.tiacdot net/users/lewkaren/meteorobs/subscribe.html