Communicating Space Life Sciences - Some Generic Reflections about Public Relations and Media Activities

摘要

"Everyone knows what the Moon is; everyone knows what this decade is, and everyone canunderstand an astronaut who returned safely to tell the story. An objective so clearly and simplydefined enables us to translate the vague notion of conquering outer space into a hard-hittingindustrial program that can be orderly planned, scheduled, and priced out. It establishes a sorelyneeded, firm non vacillating goal, which alone can serve as a basis for a long-range plan".The "father of the Moon rocket", Wernher von Braun, analyses in this quote the speech of USPresident John F. Kennedy in May 1961 by which he set the goal for the US to put a man on the moonand return him safely. Von Braun - an equally gifted communicator, and engineer - points out whateffective and efficient communications and public relations on space activities should be about: A clearand simple objective and goal, with clear and easy understandable messages and the best toolavailable, in order to reach the maximum amount of people possible. This challenge has not changedin the last 50 years. And, this challenge remains the same for Living in Space, Space Sciences andthe ISS including the exploitation of ISS. Astrium as Europe's industrial No 1 and ESA primecontractor for the European part of the ISS is faced daily with this challenge.The paper will elaborate in a systematic manner on communicating space activities: it starts bydefining the notion of communication and public relations. The mission and relevance ofcommunicating space activities will be discussed thoroughly before the focus will be put on theconception and planning of these activities. The importance of target groups is investigated and theprocess of defining the core messages is presented in detail, before looking at the available and bestcommunication instruments. The paper looks at ways to measure the success of communication. Aconclusion summarizes the findings in order to share the experience and inspire more space"activists" to promote Living in Space.