Neil Armstrong's moon landing 30 years ago was certainly the news event of the day, with virtually all news media filing reports. Though some of the interest has faded, there was still much more media interest in the anniversary this year than officials in the NASA public affairs office expected.
Couple that with the scheduled launch of a shuttle mission on the anniversary itself - though the launch was delayed two days due to weather problems - and the unexpected death of Apollo 12 mission commander Pete Conrad and the public relations staff at NASA had a long couple of weeks. And, the interest in Apollo 11's 30th anniversary was less than the interest in the 25th and 20th anniversaries, says Brian Welch, director of NASA media services.
Planning for the July event started in January as NASA PR officials tried to determine the needs of the media. Many - including video feeds of Apollo and NASA historical information, interviews with Apollo veterans and printed press releases - were the same as they had been for other anniversaries.
"We would have liked to bring together the Apollo-era astronauts, ground crew and others for a media event sometime in May or early June in order to meet everyone's deadlines. But that just wasn't possible," Welch says.Welch says.
Many journalists had already planned to be in Houston in July, and wouldn't be able to make both trips, Welch said. While NASA, the Apollo 11 astronauts, and other former NASA employees did what they could to meet media requests for interviews, some of those requests couldn't be accommodated, due to late media inquires.
There were a number of requests that came within a week of the event. Unless those reporters could attend press conferences that were already scheduled, interviews weren't possible at that late time, Welch says. Everyone's schedule was full. And, there are no new questions to be asked. Says Welch: "All the questions that can be asked have been asked."
This can be a nightmare for public relations professionals to ask clients to listen to the same questions and give the same answers again. But that wasn't the case for NASA's PR staff and astronauts and other former employees.
One major advantage for NASA and for the press for the most recent Apollo 11 anniversary was the Internet.
As a media relations tool, the Internet was in its infancy at the time of the last major anniversary in 1994. NASA's use of the Internet was also in its infancy, with just some sparse Apollo information.
This time, however, the Internet was a major part of NASA's public relations efforts. By going to NASA's home page, one could find a link to the 30th anniversary of Apollo 11, complete with downloadable logos, astronaut comments, anniversary events, documents, galleries, timelines and other links.
By providing all of this information via the Internet, NASA had fewer inquiries for this information that needed to be handled by live public relations staff.
Perhaps the most impressive feature was the photo gallery featuring pictures taken by Apollo 11 astronauts in chronological order, enabling the Web site visitor to see the photos in the same order as the scenes caught the attention of the astronauts. Even some of the people who had followed Apollo anniversary for 30 years had never seen the photos this way before.
The Internet could prove to be even more helpful for future anniversaries. Beginning in 1969, NASA started to put together a query book of reporter's questions. Welch plans to place the contents of the entire query book on the Internet, which would enable reporters to conveniently find the answers to many trivia questions (i.e., how does Neil Armstrong like his coffee?).
Contact: NASA, Brian Welch (202/358-1725)