NASA set a new record not with the slamming a coffee table into a comet but with 80 million people trying to get pictures of it. 8 p.m. EDT on Sunday evening began a 24-hour period in which the NASA site got pounded with 80 million viewers. The “rubberneckers” spent Monday morning watching the Deep Impact try to slam dance with the comet.
According to NASA, the previous record came from January of 2004 when the Mars rover spirit and they got about 30 million hits then. It would seem people still like action over drama.
“We’re extremely pleased so many people got to observe the Deep Impact mission as closely as the science team did,” said David Mould, NASA’s Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs. “Communicating the excitement of science and technology is one of our core missions, and this weekend the portal and Deep Impact teams achieved the same level of mission success on Earth as they did in space.”
Internet users tuned in early to mission coverage and stayed throughout. During the 24-hour period, the portal transmitted 25 terabytes of information, more than five times the previous high. That’s also nearly 30 times as much data as NASA’s EOS-Terra spacecraft adds to its archive daily, and 1,250 to 2,500 times as much as astronomers daily get from the Hubble Space Telescope archive. The 25 terabytes, equivalent to 25 million megabytes, would fill a stack of CD-ROMs more than 170 feet high.
The portal also streamed NASA TV’s mission coverage of the impact, peaking at 118,000 streams around the 1:52 a.m. EDT collision. The previous record of 49,672 streams also occurred on Jan. 5, 2004.
Internet users tuned in early to mission coverage and stayed throughout. During the 24-hour period, the portal transmitted 25 terabytes of information, more than five times the previous high. That’s also nearly 30 times as much data as NASA’s EOS-Terra spacecraft adds to its archive daily, and 1,250 to 2,500 times as much as astronomers daily get from the Hubble Space Telescope archive. The 25 terabytes, equivalent to 25 million megabytes, would fill a stack of CD-ROMs more than 170 feet high.
The portal also streamed NASA TV’s mission coverage of the impact, peaking at 118,000 streams around the 1:52 a.m. EDT collision. The previous record of 49,672 streams also occurred on Jan. 5, 2004.
So what have we learned here about increasing traffic to your site? First, we need to sponsor a major event, like smashing a probe into a comet. Then we need pictures of the whole thing. Finally, we need to generate much publicity for the event. Anyone have any rockets I could borrow?
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
