{
    "version" : "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1",
    "content" : "news",
    "type" : "single",
    "title" : "Dwarf Planet, Giant Numbers: NASA’s Mission to Pluto Goes Global |Digital.gov",
    "description": "Dwarf Planet, Giant Numbers: NASA’s Mission to Pluto Goes Global",
    "home_page_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/","feed_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2015/07/16/dwarf-planet-giant-numbers-nasas-mission-to-pluto-goes-global/index.json","item" : [
    {"title" :"Dwarf Planet, Giant Numbers: NASA’s Mission to Pluto Goes Global","summary" : "Even on a slow day, NASA is a pretty cool place to work, but the cool factor gets cranked way up when the whole world joins in the adventure. That’s what happened this week when the New Horizons spacecraft arrived at Pluto after decade-long, three-billion-mile journey through the solar system.","date" : "2015-07-16T14:49:49-04:00","date_modified" : "2025-01-27T19:42:55-05:00","authors" : {"jim-wilson" : "Jim Wilson"},"topics" : {
        
            "analytics" : "Analytics"
            },"branch" : "bc-archive-content-3",
      "filename" :"2015-07-16-dwarf-planet-giant-numbers-nasas-mission-to-pluto-goes-global.md",
      
      "filepath" :"news/2015/07/2015-07-16-dwarf-planet-giant-numbers-nasas-mission-to-pluto-goes-global.md",
      "filepathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/blob/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2015/07/2015-07-16-dwarf-planet-giant-numbers-nasas-mission-to-pluto-goes-global.md",
      "editpathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/edit/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2015/07/2015-07-16-dwarf-planet-giant-numbers-nasas-mission-to-pluto-goes-global.md","slug" : "dwarf-planet-giant-numbers-nasas-mission-to-pluto-goes-global","url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2015/07/16/dwarf-planet-giant-numbers-nasas-mission-to-pluto-goes-global/","content" :"\u003cp\u003eEven on a “slow” day, NASA is a pretty cool place to work, but the cool factor gets cranked way up when the whole world joins in the adventure.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2015/07/600-x-428-Pluto-equator-mountains-credit-NASA-JHU-APL-SwRI15-152.jpg\"\n    alt=\"600-x-428-Pluto-equator-mountains-credit-NASA-JHU-APL-SwRI15-152\"/\u003e\u003cp\u003eNASA/JHU APL/SwRI\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s what happened this week when the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html\"\u003eNew Horizons\u003c/a\u003e spacecraft arrived at Pluto after decade-long, three-billion-mile journey through the solar system. New Horizons has already sent back \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/images/index.html\"\u003enever-before seen images\u003c/a\u003e of the dwarf planet, and it is collecting so much data that it will take 16 months to send it all back to Earth.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAny time we go this far from home and do something that’s never been done before, it’s sort of a big deal. And it shows, thanks to our data from the \u003ca href=\"/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/guides/dap/\"\u003eDigital Analytics Program\u003c/a\u003e. Some quick facts:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt’s our biggest mission-related traffic event since we joined DAP in February 2013, with nearly 10 million page views on July 14 alone. During the 7 a.m. hour, 42 percent of all government traffic was going to NASA pages.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html\"\u003eNASA Television\u003c/a\u003e live streams were played more than 750,000 times during the day, with 200,000 plays during the arrival between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. EDT.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOn social media, \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/search?q=%23PlutoFlyby\"\u003e#PlutoFlyBy\u003c/a\u003e trended #2 on Twitter Tuesday, an \u003ca href=\"https://instagram.com/p/5HTXKMoaFL/\"\u003eInstagram post of a Pluto image\u003c/a\u003e was liked 300,000 times (the most ever), and NASA gained another 200,000 Instagram followers. Even \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/621133763385425920\"\u003ePresident Obama tweeted\u003c/a\u003e about the flyby.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cblockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"\u003e\u003cp lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003ePluto just had its first visitor! Thanks \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/NASA?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\"\u003e@NASA\u003c/a\u003e - it\u0026#39;s a great day for discovery and American leadership. \u003ca href=\"http://t.co/FfztBSMbK0\"\u003epic.twitter.com/FfztBSMbK0\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u0026mdash; President Obama (@POTUS44) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/POTUS44/status/621133763385425920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\"\u003eJuly 15, 2015\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cscript async src=\"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003c/script\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eOf course we love these numbers, and we always knew this would be a big one. But we like to push beyond the tonnage for some deeper insights, pulling from the wealth of data open to us through DAP. A few points jumped out to us quickly:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image image-right image-right-legacy\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2015/07/370-x-435-NASA-2-international.jpg\"\n    alt=\"The top 10 countries, from one to 10, were: the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, India, Brazil, Japan, and the Netherlands.\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThis event had a huge global reach, with \u003cstrong\u003e57% of traffic coming from 231 countries or territories outside the U.S.\u003c/strong\u003e We hit pretty much every spot on the globe. We’re proud that we can show off this amazing milestone for America’s space program to people all around the world.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMore new users came to the site, and they stayed longer\u003c/strong\u003e. New visits accounted for 64 percent of traffic, up from an average of 56 percent. Average session time was up to 4 minutes from an average of 2:25, but pages per session didn’t change much, suggesting that users were spending more time on the site reading and looking at photos. The sheer volume of traffic also added to the engagement, with many users visiting older features while looking for the latest news.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2015/07/600-x-214-NASA-2-engage.jpg\"\n    alt=\"An analytics report shows the stats mentioned above. \"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNASA TV held its audience throughout the day, with plays in the 20,000-30,000 range even during hours with no direct New Horizons coverage. This was a bonus, giving us a larger than usual audience for broadcasts about the International Space Station and other NASA programs.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is just getting started. We’re looking forward to seeing what else Pluto has to offer, and watching the analytics to see how the world engages.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eJim Wilson is Senior Editor of \u003ca href=\"https://www.nasa.gov\"\u003ewww.nasa.gov\u003c/a\u003e at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n"}
  ]
}