Poster presented on March 6-8, 2002 at the conference on Communicating the Future: Best Practices in Communication of Science and Technology to the Public, co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and NIST. Poster topics were selected as "best practices" through a formal peer review by a committee of distinguished science writers, educators, and researchers.

Science@NASA: Direct to People!
Program conducted by: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Marshall Space Flight Center

Abstract

The Science Directorate at Marshall Space Flight Center conducts a diverse program of Internet-based science communication through a Science Roundtable process. The Roundtable includes active researchers, writers, NASA public relations, educators, and administrators. The Science@NASA award-winning family of Web sites features science, mathematics, and space news. The focus of sharing real-time, science-related events has been to inform, involve, and inspire the public about science. Each member of our Web family is highlighted in this poster.

Origins of the Roundtable
Science@NASA is sponsored by the Science Directorate of the Marshall Space Flight Center. It is the result of a four-year communications research effort between Marshall, the University of Florida School of Journalism and Communications, and the internet communications company, Bishop Web Works.

Academic science communication research is sponsored to develop an understanding of how individuals accept and process scientific information. The main thrust of the outreach effort is via the internet and so considerable research has been performed on methods of effective internet communications.

• The Science Communications Roundtable meets once per week.
• Stories are selected, assigned, and reviewed.
• Reviewers are members of the Roundtable and the principal scientists from the story.
• The review process requires 2-3 days and generates about 3 articles each week.

Science@NASA consists of a family of six websites.

• Science.nasa.gov, Ciencia, and Space Weather are aimed at adult, science
  literate and high-school audiences.
• Liftoff is aimed at a high school audience.
• NASAKids is aimed at a grade-middle school audience
• Thursday'sClassroom is aimed at educators and students.

NASAKids Website

The NASAKids site is aimed at a middle school-aged audience. Research shows that middle school is a critical time when children's interest in science often wanes. By presenting science and technology in an engaging, attractive, and organized manner, NASAKids hopes to kindle those earlier sparks of scientific curiosity. NASAKids content entertains and involves by teaching with puzzles, news stories, and topics covering NASA's strategic enterprises.

NASAKids has a major new feature, the NASAKids Club. Children may join the club, following all Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) guidelines, and have access to a ÒMy NASAÓ homepage, customized for them. They also have a nasakids.com e-mail account and online projects that earn them points towards a NASAKids ranking (similar to merit badges in the scouts). This is a unique level of involvement for children in a NASA website.

Liftoff Website

This is our most popular site, featuring stories from SNG (and original stories as well) that are recast for a high school level audience. Liftoff has a variety of content options: regularly produced stories about what is new across the strategic enterprises of NASA; science and engineering background for a deeper exploration of NASA's HEDS and science enterprises; online tools to involve readers in tracking, observing, and learning more about NASA's space explorations.

J-Track and J-Pass applets for tracking satellites are among the most popular tools for this purpose. The Liftoff site also features its stories in text and audio.

Stories include a vocabulary guide for select words. New stories appear about once per week.

SNG Website

The stories on SNG cover all aspects of NASA science including earth, space, microgravity science, advanced propulsion, exploration and development of space, and aerospace technology advancements. Frequent stories include items of timely astronomy interest. The site features each story in written and audio formats.

Ciencia Website

Ciencia contains the Spanish version of SNG stories. Our goal is simultaneous release of English and Spanish stories at the rate of 3 per week. Our team of translators and editors is international in scope, and all have some scientific background (either as scientists or science journalists). This product directly contributes to the involvement in and broad understanding of science by a major under-served group. Moreover, educators who teach English as a second language, or who teach Spanish to English speakers, find the availability of these science stories in both languages extremely useful.

Space Weather Website

This site covers information about the status of solar activity and its interactions with the EarthÕs ionosphere and magnetosphere. Reports on coronal mass ejections, solar wind, sunspot activity, and various geomagnetic indices are included.

Performance Metrics

Our individual sites registered hits*/visits**/subscribers in 2001 as follows:

Note that many subscribers sign up to receive multiple products. The number of unique Internet addresses that subscribe to our services is 340,000. An additional 48,200 subscribers receive notices of satellite sighting opportunities in their skies. This is significant growth over last year and further indication that our audiences value our services!

Ciencia debuted in November, 2000. Within five months, Ciencia's subscriber list contained more than 5,000 people. (Ciencia was shut down for three months in 2001.)

*A hit is any file that is transferred. So, for a typical web page, you download the page (1 hit) and any images on the page (1 hit for each image).
A page with frames takes a hit for the frame, and one hit for each frame window, plus all the images.

**A visit is defined as contiguous hits from the same IP address. A new visit would require a delay of 15 minutes between hits.

Reader Survey

85% rated the quality of our articles as good to excellent
28% said they were students
19% said they were teachers
80% of the teachers said that they used our materials in their classrooms,
68% said they read our services at home
63% said that they pass our information on to family and friends,
31 % were outside the USA
25% said they were female

And the most gratifying statistic is that fully 96% of our respondents said that they actually did something as a result of our stories, such as go outside and look for an aurora, meteor shower, or satellite, or talk with their children or grandkids about science and NASA! A remakable measure of impact on people as a result of our outreach efforts!

In the Future...

• Simultaneous release of English and Spanish stories.
• Add audio format stories to Ciencia.
• Through audio transmissions, we will expose subscribers to the sounds of
  whistlers from Earth's ionosphere, the pings of meteors crashing through our
  atmosphere, and ÒmusicÓ from storms in Jupiter's magnetosphere.
• Increase number of real-time ÒinvolvementÓ events.

Authors
R. Koczor, D. L. Gallagher, M. Adams
Marshall Space Flight Center

Contact
Ronald Koczor
Marshall Space Flight Center
Huntsville, AL 35812
ron.koczor@msfc.nasa.gov

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Created: 5/17/02
Last updated: 10/29/02
Contact: inquiries@nist.gov