![]() But these justifications for the station are largely myths. This knowledge could be used to plan a manned mission to Mars or the construction of a base on the moon. NASA says the station provides a platform for space research and helps to determine how people can live and work safely in space. The space agency is now saddled with the International Space Station, the budget-hemorrhaging “laboratory” orbiting Earth. And that's the main reason NASA spends nearly a quarter of its budget to launch the space shuttle about half a dozen times every year. Human spaceflight provides the stories that NASA uses to sell its programs to the public. No one throws a ticker-tape parade for a telescope. The Hubble Space Telescope and other orbital observatories are bringing back pictures of the early moments of creation. In recent years the Pathfinder rover has scoured the surface of Mars, and the Galileo spacecraft has surveyed Jupiter and its moons. NASA is still conducting grade-A science in space, but it is being done by unmanned probes rather than astronauts. NASA claimed that Glenn went up for science-he served as a guinea pig in various medical experiments-but it was clear that the main benefit of Glenn's space shuttle ride was publicity, not scientific discovery. Glenn's return to space at the age of 77 made STS-95 the most avidly followed mission since the Apollo moon landings. Perhaps the best example of NASA's public-relations prowess was the participation of John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, in the 1998 shuttle mission STS-95. NASA presents its astronauts as ready-made heroes, even when their accomplishments in space are no longer groundbreaking. For this reason, NASA issues a steady stream of press releases and images from its human spaceflight program.Įvery launch of the space shuttle is a media event. NASA has learned a valuable lesson about marketing in the 21st century: to promote its programs, it must provide entertaining visuals and stories with compelling human characters. To achieve this goal, the agency conducts an extensive public-relations effort that is similar to the marketing campaigns of America's biggest corporations. taxpayers that space science is worth $16.25 billion a year. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has a difficult task.
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