NASA is shutting down many of its social media accounts, including those dedicated to the Voyager mission and the Mars Curiosity and Perseverance rovers.
It announced that posts would be coming to an end this week, with affected accounts, such as Voyager, pinning text along the lines of “Important Update: As part of @NASA’s effort to streamline communications, this account will be archived in the coming weeks” to the top of their feeds.
To be clear, the Voyager mission itself is not affected, just the mission’s social media presence.
While the archiving of some accounts, such as @NASA_SLS and @NASA_Orion, has a certain logic, mothballing Voyager and the Mars rovers makes less sense.
After all, the current US administration is determined to cancel NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) unless certain US lawmakers have their way. However, Voyager will continue its mission, and the Mars rovers will keep on trundling regardless. In addition, the @MarsCuriosity feed currently has approximately four million followers, considerably more than the one and a half million of the @NASAMars account.
The @NASANewHorizons account, for the probe that flew past Pluto, was axed a few weeks ago, with users directed to the @NASASolarSystem account. @NASAVoyager will shortly be joining it.
According to space agency, this is all about “Improving the experience of NASA followers.”
A spokesperson for NASA told The Register, “The agency continues to take steps to strengthen and streamline NASA’s digital presence through an ongoing social media consolidation effort.
“With more than 300 agency accounts across 15 platforms, we have an opportunity to better focus our messaging and connect more clearly with the public.
“This initiative will help us fulfill our responsibility to share NASA’s story widely and effectively – by reducing the number of accounts, improving the signal-to-noise ratio of content, and making our messaging more unified and accessible.”
So nothing whatsoever to do with cuts that could be headed the agency’s way or dodging an awkward social media moment if an axe should fall on a perfectly functional mission, right? No, this is all about consolidating posts, so users keen on following the Voyager mission don’t have to bother hunting down a feed for the spacecraft; it’ll all be under @NASASolarSystem and @NASAJPL.
Affected accounts, such as @NASAVoyager, will run a version of their greatest hits before the end finally comes and someone presses the archive button. As for what “archived” means, there will be no more posts, and eventually the account will be removed. A spokesperson told us, “As part of this process, we’re working to ensure compliance with record retention requirements.”
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“And as appropriate, content associated with accounts that are sunset[ted] will be promoted through other agency platforms.”
Someone at NASA HQ hitting the delete archive key on the agency’s socials is nothing new. Former Shuttle boss Wayne Hale noted the excising of his blog posts from NASA’s site earlier this year.
However, with the space agency struggling to demonstrate its importance and engage with a seemingly disinterested public, axing the social feeds of missions that have captured the imagination, such as Voyager and the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers, in favor of a consolidation feels a little like a step backwards in terms of outreach. ®
