Media from the Moon

Probably the single most well-known line in human history is that uttered by US astronaut Neil Armstrong as he stepped onto the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969:

That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind

Armstrong being in a position to say the line was a technical and geopolitical achievement essentially unrivalled before or since. But for me, one of the more intriguing aspects is how it has become so deeply embedded in global cultural memory. That cultural impact occured in large part because of the media and communication infrastructure built into the mission, in turn driven by a foundational legislated requirement for NASA to undertake public communication, and the communication professionals who insisted on such infrastructure.

NASA and partners are now once again preparing to return to the moon. Artemis 2 is scheduled to launch today, April 1st, in the United States. It won't land on the moon - that is scheduled for 2028 with Artemis 4 - but will take humans further from Earth than ever before, looping around the moon and returning swiftly in a unique test of the new Orion spacecraft.

Space missions like Apollo and Artemis (not to mention Voyager, Mars rovers, and many more) rely upon a vast array of communication infrastructure. The broadcast infrastructure supporting the Apollo 11 landing included three major tracking and relay satellite dish facilities 120 degrees of latitude apart on the surface of Earth, at Goldstone in California, in Canberra, Australia, and Madrid, Spain. Two 64 m satellite dishes at Goldstone and Parkes, Australia, were used to receive the television signals sent by the lunar lander. In the case of the Apollo program, that infrastructure extended beyond Earth to the lunar lander and the orbiting command service modul, both of which had important technical functions in capturing and relaying information to Earth-based facilities. For the landing, all three American commercial television networks held live broadcasts for over 24 hours. The role of the Parkes Observatory (alongside Honeysuckle Creek in Canberra) was portrayed (albeit dramatised) in a beloved 2000 film The Dish.

Unlike the crackly audio and video from Apollo 11, the Artemis missions will be broadcast almost uninterrupted across digital channels in high-definition video. The astronauts have personal iPhones to take numerous photos from their vantage, of things that interest them, and the capsule itself is equipped with numerous internal and external cameras. In short, these are media-saturated missions.

NASA podcast Houston, We Have A Podcast has an excellent recent episode outlining all the ways it is being covered in house by NASA's public affairs office. This too indicates an evolution in the way missions are covered. While professionalised broadcasts using widespread specialist communication and media infrastructure have always been part of NASA's major space missions, having podcasts, live online broadcasts, blog posts, and contemporaneous social media posts coming directly from the agency obviously adds to and massively expands the media ecosystem associated with space missions.

Even aside from the obvious launch and lunar flybys, the Artemis missions produce spectacular new images of our world from space. Just as the famous ‘Blue Marble’ image from Apollo 17, these have a role in promoting a world free of political borders and struggles. In high-definition, they may even allow those of us on the ground to at least partially experience the 'overview effect', the overwhelming sense of awe and transcendence astronauts report after seeing our world from space. For that to occur, we have to pause, pay attention, and see, in ways that are increasingly difficult in the busy modern media and political environment.

NASA's dedication to public communication is in some ways an accident of history. Yes, it is laid out as a requirement in NASA's foundational legislative document. But astronauts, engineers, and sometimes administrators have resisted live mission recording and broadcasts. The media and communication outcomes of Apollo - which have laid the foundation for more recent missions including Artemis - required sustained advocacy by skilled professionals. And certainly other spacefaring nations have not advanced a public communication agenda of this level.

Let's compare NASA's situation to that of Australian science agencies. The Australian Space Agency is a non-statutory organisation, so it does not have a dedicated establishing act akin to NASA's. Instead, it has a charter which does include "inspiring the Australian community" as a responsibility, but seems fairly weak against NASA's obligation for "the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities". CSIRO's establishing act gives it 'secondary obligations' to "collect, interpret and disseminate information relating to scientific and technical matters; and to publish scientific and technical reports, periodicals and papers". This is a little stronger but still does not urge the kind of widespread distribution required of NASA.

So in the face of NASA being required to undertake such public communication, but nonetheless being occasionally challenged in attempting to do so, how might Australian agencies respond when challenged to provide live broadcasts of their major initiatives? Would such attempts fall under 'inspiring the community', or 'disseminating information relating to scientific and technical matters'?

This post is not to criticise these specific Australian agencies, or indeed any others, but to observe that there is substantial power in adequately resourcing communication functions. Inspiration comes from supporting those working to get the message out even in a complex and saturated media environment. It comes from thinking of communication as a foundational task within the agencies that we expect to deliver. And as the next generation of scientists might be inspired by the work of today's achievers, the next generation of communicators likewise need to see skilled, empathetic, impactful workers in that role doing what they do best today.