PROMOTING SPACE UTILIZATION VIA INTERNET: FIRST EXPERIENCES AND LESSONS LEARNED

摘要

There is no doubt that Internet and the WWW (World Wide Web) have strongly modified our way to communicate with people and to search for information. Over 50 millions of people have direct access to the Internet services and this number is growing more and more every day. For this reason, MARS Center in Naples, has set up a WWW server on which all information pertaining MARS activities, microgravity utilization and MARS services are arranged. Links to relevant ESA, NASA and other space centers have been installed, regularly checked and updated. Multimedia and interactive features have been implemented. Differently from other space related sites, on-line expert assistance has been also activated. The result is a steady access of more than 200 people per month to the MARS pages, asking and retrieving information and having direct contact with space experts. In particular, a dedicated web service was set-up for the Spacelab LMS (Life and Microgravity Sciences) mission (July 1996) to report on mission activities and MARS remote operations. This feature resulted in one of the first attempts done in Europe to disseminate, in quasi-real time, space utilization information to both researchers, media and interested people during a space mission. This paper is intended to report on the MARS Internet policy for space utilization promotion, the above mentioned experiences and recommendations, lessons learned and the future utilization of this system for space station promotional purposes.