• by Paul Gough , January 19, 2004

Ebay, MarketWatch.com, DrudgeReport.com and NASA.gov?

NASA.gov seems to have made big inroads into the at-work audience, who aren't close enough to the TV to find out more about that spunky Mars rover. NASA still has a long way to go before it builds a Moon base or sends astronauts to Mars, two goals that President Bush outlined last week. But the space agency seems to be winning the public relations game, if at-work Web analytics are any measure. Thanks to the exploits of the Mars Explorer, NASA's Website rocketed 217 percent for the week ended Jan. 11, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. It was the fastest-growing at-work destination for the week, with 2.3 million unique visitors. There were 1.7 million unique visitors to NASA.gov at home, up 48 percent.

Most of the clicks went to the Mars Explorer section of the site, Nielsen//NetRatings said.

That's good news for NASA, which is smarting after the revelations following the Feb. 1 crash of the space shuttle Columbia that killed seven astronauts. It needs strong interest from the public before it can mount an expedition to the stars. And it's going to need a lot more money than it's been getting recently, which an investigative report linked to a lax culture of safety up to the fatal crash.

But with the bump that the Mars Explorer gave NASA, it makes you wonder what would have happened during the runup to the Apollo Moon missions of the late 1960s, if NASA had a Web site then.

-- Paul J. Gough