NASA Phoenix Lander, the Web and Social Media: A Different Experience

Years ago, when space travel was new, people stopped everything just to watch a space ship take off or land or someone walk on the Moon. Those were and still are, HUGE achievements. We have yet to send another manned mission to the Moon and with a huge Federal deficit and a world-wide recession looming, it’s a miracle that space exploration receives any funding whatsoever. Just look at the California School System, Arts and Sciences were among the first programs to be cut. How can the U.S. even think about the next generation of space exploration if children are not even exposed to science, unless the school funding is supplemented in some way to infuse this type of learning into the curriculum.

But I digress from the main point of this post. A new generation of information is truly upon us. Whereas before, the nation and world huddled around the one or two media devices available (TV or Radio) to watch, listen and think about these space events unfold as a collective, nowadays, people have too many distractions to really dedicate time to something as important as landing on Mars. With the frequency of the Space Shuttle launching and landing and main-stream media giving us virtualized space travel daily with Star Trek, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, it is no wonder that people just don’t see the importance or grandeur of the Phoenix landing on Mars on Sunday.

I think that NASA has realized that they have to now cut through the huge amount of clutter that pervades the digital mediums around us. It’s a new generation, one of blogs, social networking and texting, where communication is instantaneous. I have to admit, I almost missed the entire Phoenix landing event completely. But the way that I found out about it is part of the reason I’m writing about this. I had just come from a family outing of a Sunday AM movie matinee and decided to check my Twitter account on my iPhone. (For those that don’t know Twitter, it’s essentially a community-based, web-based, instant messaging platform where you have “followers” – people who actively watch what you write – and people you “follow” – people whose status updates you want to read. It was originally launched to allow to to write about, or “tweet”, what you were currently doing or thinking, but has evolved into a mass communication platform to do anything from simple socializing to advanced 1-on-1 PR.) Back to the story…on my Twitter list or feed was a mention that the Phoenix was going to be landing in 3 hours and included a link to the NASA Phoenix website.

Checking out the NASA website, I was able to find out about the various TV broadcasts that were going to happen during the landing event. Once we got home, I got the big screen tuned to the broadcast and started to educate my 3 girls (oldest being 9) about space travel, Mars, science and physics. There was a great couple-minute introduction to the EDL (Entry, Decent and Landing) stage, which engaged the kids a bit. (The linked video is actually a summary of the landing.) Since it wasn’t up to the media supremacy of Hollywood, my kids lost a bit of interest (regained during the actual landing though). With my kids somewhat abandoning me, that is when I turned to Twitter.

The NASA engineers did something very creative this time. They actually set up a Twitter account for the Phoenix Lander for the event and for subsequent missions. You can follow the tweets of the Phoenix here. What I also found interesting, was the decision to make it all in the first person. Once landed, Mars Phoenix declared “Cheers! Tears!! I’m here!” They also have set up the NASA Phoenix Landing Blog.

During the landing, Twitter really heated up with people showing excitement and interest. I realized that using Twitter, we had essentially formed a community at large, linked through social networking, similar to what we had done many years ago when everyone got together physically to watch the event on TV or listen to it on the radio. It was an odd sensation, rushing back and forth between my computer and the TV and trying to excite my children on this event. In the end, however, the kids got very excited about this great success. As did my Twitter friends. I felt like I had watched something within a large social group, it was very odd yet strangely warm, people were linked and sharing a commonality. I believe this type of socially networked community sharing will be even bigger as more networks are built and others are intertwined and integrated.

Just a few last thoughts. It was difficult to explain to my kids how it takes 10 minutes for a radio signal to come back to the Earth from Mars. It’s almost comparable to how long distance phone calls were 30-40 years ago. The landing was over with (either successfully or not) even before the transmissions were received on Earth; it was an odd concept. But I wonder, now that social networking has come to be so immediate, how will we survive the lagging of super long distance communication through space? Our society is so used to instant gratification and always-on, split second communication, are we prepared for a paradigm shift back to times of old?

HTD Says: For the first time in a long time, I watched an event with a community; only this time I was physically not with them. Very interesting.