There’s nothing quite like a discovery announcement from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to get people excited and taxpayer money flowing.
After NASA implored Twitter followers on June 6 to “Join us tomorrow at 2pm ET for a lively discussion about two new Mars science results from the @MarsCuriosity rover,” the crowd went wild. Headlines gushed that discoveries could “reveal life on Mars,” with endless hype over the “massive discovery.” And NASA was not innocent in ramping up fervor, embargoing results in the journal Science and urging the public to #askNASA.
Unfortunately, the results were nothing more than a rehashing of old news, and the wrong questions were asked. The studies found additional evidence that methane in the Martian atmosphere fluctuates based on season. This could prove to be a big deal, since methane may be the product of living organisms. Also, organic compounds (important building blocks of life) were found in ancient Martian rocks.
These are some interesting finds, even if they don’t nearly add up to life on Mars. But wait — don’t these findings sound familiar? In 2014, NASA announced that they found evidence of methane variability, and organic compounds in Martian rocks to boot. Sure, now we have more data and greater confidence in the finding, but it’s hardly Mars-shattering news.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that an overhyped NASA announcement turned out to be a nothingburger. In December 2017, NASA hosted a media teleconference “to announce the latest discovery made by its planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.” At that conference, participants learned that another solar system had more planets than our own (excluding Pluto, of course). Presenters also beamed excitement that they had discovered a hot rock, and were delighted that — surprise — Google AI was capable of recognizing basic data patterns.
NASA-affiliated physicist Dr. Robert Sheldon was “underwhelmed. So many other things NASA could talk about in a press release, and this is the best they can offer?”
It depends what Sheldon meant by “best.” Less than two months before the exoplanet conference, NASA released a technical/cost analysis on their ambitious, exoplanet-hunting Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope. Projected telescope costs were now expected to overshoot estimates by 25 percent, or nearly a billion dollars. And week before NASA’s conference, the Government Accountability Office noted technical challenges, chronic scheduling delays, and cost overruns in NASA’s leading telescope projects.
For government agencies, these sorts of issues are par for the course. But unlike the Veterans Affairs Administration or the Department of Health and Human Services, NASA can easily distract the public from unwanted attention with what at least appear to be shiny, cool new discoveries. This latest “methane and organics” announcement comes at an opportune time for an agency increasingly blasted for rising costs and dysfunction.
Last month, GAO reported that NASA’s “launch delay was 12 months — the most we’ve ever reported.” They documented deteriorating cost and scheduling performance in 2018, and noted that “NASA doesn’t have a current cost estimate for the Orion crew vehicle, one of its most expensive projects.”
The agency’s new leader is trying to keep project enthusiasm alive in the halls of Congress, ahead of a coming report it owes to Congress on how it will fix cost overrun problems.
For an agency trying to balance ambitious Moon and Mars priorities, controlling the news cycle is key, even if it means making well-timed announcements with little meat on the bone. Program leaders rely on starry-eyed politicians and their media superstar status to divert attention away from many failings.
Taxpayers can and must retake control by calling out nothingburger pronouncements and demanding greater oversight of the agency.
Ross Marchand is the director of policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
