Communicating Outside of NASAWorld

In the science, planetary, astronomy and earth observations areas, NASA does a pretty good job on communications. Hubble and the past several Mars missions are good and positive examples.

Within Human Spaceflight, communications is an area that is not taken seriously. They bring in people with no background in NASA and none in communications, and make political assignments, thinking its probably the least important area to pay attention to.

Shuttle is passable but barely so, and then only because NASA Public Affairs highlights launches.

ISS is for all practical purposes non-existent to the public. Few inside or outside of NASA seem to understand what it is, how it functions, or what its for.

The Constellation people never seemed to know for themselves what their goals were, and they certainly never succeeded in communicating anything cohesive to others.

I know many folks inside and outside of NASA who can do this and do it with passion. But they need institutional support from the bureaucracy and establishment of outreach as a priority. Too often it is underfunded and overlooked, but it can really help advance the cause of space affairs if done right.

@ Frank.
Within SMD, the missions competed via AO's, Education and Public Outreach is supposed to be 2% of the mission budget. Not sure what the requirement is for directed SMD missions. And completely not sure of what goes on in SOMD, ESMD, or Aero. Anyone?

Excellent article on the NASA space sciences education and outreach program here:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2004ASPC..319..423R

All NASA elements are supposed to be contributing a % of every program budget line item to education and outreach.

Its a bit difficult to track how communications, outreach and education money is spent in support of HSF since there are many facets.

SOMD says they spend their % largely through 'in-kind services', which means since it costs them $ to keep an ISS in orbit with astronauts on board, since the astronauts talk to schools, the cost of flight operations and the cost/value of the astronaut's time counts as a significant part of their % contribution.

Headquarters SOMD maintains a small staff supporting education and outreach and contributes funds to public affairs and education offices.

SOMD has produced a couple products, like
the ISS Guide

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/ISS_Reference_Guide.html
(seems in need of updating)

and the ISS Website
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/ISSRG/
which won some big awards several years ago when it was introduced.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/reference/
produced by the Public Affairs Office

Responsibility for program specific products is delegated to the Programs, ISS and Shuttle.

ISS Program has had several high ranking managers with size-able staffs in charge of this area for many years.

The major communications products the ISS Program has developed in the last several years has been their annual space calendar:

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2010/01/new-nasa-calend.html

and the post-increment movies shown to employees at crew return events and which astronauts use when they speak to groups around the country.

ESMD spent a lot of their education/outreach money on animations.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/main/cev.html

There were also a couple of booklets:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/library/exploration_101.html

http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/spacemaps/NASA_space_map.html

over the last few years on exploration activities.