NASA: Juno Mission

to Jupiter
A Case Study

By: Roxanna Reyes

Professor Bolls

PR 3300
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NASA: Juno Mission to Jupiter

A Case Study

Introduction
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a government agency dedicated
to space exploration and research. According to NASA’s official website, the organization was formed
in response to early Soviet space achievements and became fully operational on October 1, 1958. Since
then, they have launched several space exploration projects—some successful and others not. In this
case study, I will be examining the communication methods used by NASA with their latest mission,
Juno. I will also be providing basic background and history information leading to the mission and
analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of NASA’s communication methods.

Background Information
Why did NASA choose to study Jupiter, the largest of all the planets in our solar system?
According to the Juno mission website, there were four main reasons:

• To determine the amount of water in Jupiter’s atmosphere, which would help to figure out which
planet formation theory is correct (or if new ones are needed)
• To analyze Jupiter’s atmosphere
• To map the planet’s magnetic and gravity fields, providing clues to its deep structure
• To study Jupiter’s magnetosphere at the poles in order to provide insight on how its magnetic force
field affects its atmosphere

In short, if NASA can determine how Jupiter was formed, it could lead to better clues about how our
own solar system was formed. This information could lead to new scientific breakthroughs.

History
However, funding these missions hasn’t always been easy for the organization. Even though it
is a government agency (which means that they receive an annual budget that is passed by the United
States Congress), they have been subject to budget cuts and public disapproval in the past. For years,
there has been a debate questioning whether the U.S. should continue to factor in the costs of space
exploration programs into the U.S. budget, especially in times of economic turmoil and instability. For
example, an article on Space.com explains how Republican members of the House Committee
proposed a NASA authorization bill in 2014 that would slash NASA’s funding that year to $16.6
billion--$300 million less than it received in 2013. The debate has also leaked onto the public, with many
people agreeing that the money should be put to better use.

Although the economy has suffered some setbacks recently, there still weren’t unlimited funds
for the country in the past. So how was NASA able to get the public on board with these expensive

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missions in the past? One method that has shown to be successful is to build public interest and
excitement in order to sway public opinion and that’s exactly what they set out to do with the Juno
mission to Jupiter. The spacecraft was successfully launched on August 5, 2011 and had an arrival date
of July 4, 2016.

Strengths
Although NASA has been criticized in the past for its less than stellar communication efforts,
this mission seems to mark the beginning of improvements made to those efforts. One of NASA’s
criticisms stems from the accusation that their Office of Communications fails to explain to the public
about their missions and how they are relevant to them. But with the Juno mission, however, NASA set
up a website dedicated specifically to the probe. The website provides an abundance of information
that includes the discovery of Jupiter and how it was likely formed. It has videos and images of the
planet and more were added as the probe got closer and closer. The website not only explained why it
was important to study Jupiter, but it also provided a timeline of the journey. The website also featured
livestreaming and a “JunoCam” that people could log on too and see where the spacecraft was. This
shows that NASA was trying to provide the public with as much information as possible and to explain
how the mission was relevant.

Another strength was their use of social media. As soon as the mission was approved, NASA
set out to create a Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and YouTube channel dedicated to Juno. They had a
countdown, constant updates, short videos and gifs, and links. Their Twitter page also featured Q&A
sessions with astronauts and scientists involved with the mission. Social media has been an effective
tool for PR because of all the audiences available and because it can provide quick, interesting
information that won’t bore or confuse the public.

In order to further produce public interest and support, they also employed the use of having a
credible or authoritative spokesperson. NASA uploaded videos on YouTube of Bill Nye speaking on
Jupiter and the mission. This was definitely a well-planned persuasion method, considering his
popularity.

This time, they also tried to improve community relations with small PR projects during the
mission. NASA held a White House astronomy night during the mission and a NASA Social, in which
they encouraged social media users of all ages to apply to Juno’s arrival event. In addition, they
reached out to the popular band, Weezer, and asked them to write a song that would excite the public
about the mission. However, NASA didn’t stop there. They also did a collaboration with Apple Music
to create a short video with an exclusive soundtrack that would be free for everyone

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Weaknesses
Even though their communication efforts had a lot of strengths, they also did have some
weaknesses. One of these weaknesses was that NASA provided a lot of information that seemed to be
all over the place. For example, their website would open up new windows for almost every link that
was clicked. If I wanted to look at the JunoCam and livestream one of their events, I would have so
many windows open in my browser, which also took a while to load.

In addition, a lot the events they offered were announced with little to no time at all on their
social media sites. For example, their NASA Social was announced only a few days before the event
actually took place. That left people with almost no time to apply, let alone plan to travel to Pasadena,
California where the event took place. Although the events were featured on the website, they weren’t
talked about until the week of.

Recommendations
What NASA could’ve done better was to create a specific hashtag for the mission that they
could use on their social media sites. This would have organized all the information available into one
place because although these pages were dedicated to the Juno mission itself, the page retweeted a lot
of other information pertaining to NASA, or just general facts about space. Although those were
interesting information, it did make it difficult to have to scroll through hundreds of tweets that only
mentioned Juno.

Another improvement is that if NASA wants to prove its relevancy with the public, they need
to learn how to give the public more time to apply for their events if they really want them to be
involved. It’s no use if NASA makes all these opportunities available to them, but only within a short
timeframe.

Conclusion
NASA made a lot of improvements with their communication efforts involving the Juno
mission. They tried to become more relevant to the public, had a strong social media presence, and
implemented PR programs that involved the public. However, they still need to improve on delivering
timely announcements and being more organized with the information they provide.

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Sources

https://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-history-overview

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/overview/index.html

https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/

http://www.spin.com/2016/06/weezer-nasa-i-love-the-usa-stream-new-song/

http://www.space.com/22023-nasa-authorization-bill-debate.html

http://thespacereview.com/article/580/1

http://thespacereview.com/article/899/1

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