I would like to take a minute to congratulate NASA for their exceptional work with the Mars Curiosity rover mission. But this tribute is not for the spacecraft design or rocket science. It's for NASA's exceptional job in telling their story and engaging the public throughout the mission.

Our organizations may not have $2.6 billion dollar budgets but we can mimic NASA's successful outreach work to increase awareness and public interest of our own missions.

In a time of budget cuts and critiques of all things "government" and against the backdrop of a similar Russian mission that failed to leave Earth's orbit just under a year ago; NASA has succeeded in capturing our attention.

Starting on the drawing board, building excitement through launch, steady updates along the 352 million mile flight, the fiery decent, the jet-powered crane landing, and on to the real scientific work; NASA has recaptured the imagination of the public, exciting a new generation of engineers, scientists, and star gazers.

Not to diminish them, the Curiosity mission does have remarkable statistics. The fact sheets mentions NASA flight controllers launching a 737,400 pound rocket, accurately navigating a spacecraft flying nearly 22,000 miles per hour, managing the $2.6 billion dollar mission budget and precisely coordinating the thousands of experts that made it all possible.

But as I said before, this blog is not about the numbers, it's about public engagement which is going viral.

Judging from a YouTube videos spoofing the mission, alien hunts, over a million Twitter followers (including twitter stardom for the Mohawk sporting flight controller Bobak Ferdowsi), NASA has clearly put an emphasis into engaging the media and as a result, they sparked a renewed interest in space and our closest planetary neighbor.

Project Scientist John Grotzinger sums it up best, "I can guarantee you in the days, months and years from now you'll be hearing an incredible science story. This whole enterprise, if you divide by every woman, man and child in this country, comes out to be the cost of a movie (about $7). I speak on behalf of all my colleagues in science, that's a movie I want to see!"

Your organization is doing great work too. How are you getting people excited about it?

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/gallery/gallery-indexArtist.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57487073-76/nasa-rover-successfully-lowered-to-surface-of-mars/

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