After considerable buildup, NASA’s latest big announcement is dirt. To be fair, it is Martian dirt, but when a press release hits its climax with “we have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point,” we should begin to wonder just why NASA spent weeks hyping the announcement. Or, put differently, we begin to see why NASA’s every move since announcing yesterday’s press conference has worked to reduce expectations. It’s not that Curiosity’s latest findings aren’t interesting or significant, but they are examples of the sort of incremental, yeomen-like science that usually changes the world from behind the scenes. We can respect validity of the work while acknowledging that it is the latest in what is fast becoming a string of embarrassing PR missteps for NASA.

When the National Aeronautics and Space Administration speaks, it knows exactly how its words will be perceived. When it makes an announcement like the one in 2010, of a discovery “that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life”, it knows what the reaction will be. In that case, the discovery of so-called “arsenic-based life,” what we ended up getting was less anti-climax than fake-out. It held a major press conference, inviting dozens of the country’s most important media outlets, and had the lead researcher present her paper from the head of a panel of experts. She laid out her evidence for an arsenic pathway in metabolism point by point — and after every point, the panel objected.

Over-hype, under-deliver

It seems that somewhere during the lead-up to the announcement, NASA realized how utterly open to criticism its study truly was, or that there was simply too much dissent from the study’s critics within NASA. Whatever the reason, the other panelists questioned virtually every claim made by their colleague’s study, with the chief opponent openly calling it bad science. The whole affair was horribly uncomfortable and culminated with a few angry exchanges through tight-lipped smiles, and an abrupt end to questions. The arsenic study is still under scrutiny today, and there is a movement to have it removed from the pages of Science, with a note that it should never have been published in the first place. Researcher Rosie Redfield has helped lead the charge, asking on her blog whether the researchers are “just bad scientists or whether they’re unscrupulously pushing NASA’s ‘There’s life in outer space!’ agenda.”

The validity of the arsenic study is ultimately secondary to the fact that it was too poorly presented for it to matter. The study’s findings are fascinating if true, but NASA did little to highlight exactly why they might be important. No illustrations or videos were produced to help communicate the important implications; the announcement itself just a lone researcher explaining her study while fending off equally credentialed critics from within her own organization. I’m all for honesty and academic rigor, but that’s just getting ridiculous.

Such conflicted messaging is a theme of NASA’s recent efforts in public outreach. This week, NASA researcher went on record promising a disappointment, and bemoaning the original coverage that got people so excited in the first place; NASA seems to have very little in the way of internal discipline. It is a collection of nerds given the opportunity to gush about their favorite thing in the world. It’s both understandable and unacceptable that they run so rampant in the media with NASA’s name and reputation.

An almost identical incident occurred two years earlier, when NASA over-hyped a discovery from the Phoenix lander. How is it possible that an agency with as much intrinsic appeal as the space program has so much trouble being even a little bit cool? The trend has come to define NASA in the minds of a generation, no longer as a group of super-nerds cloistered in their high towers but as a government bureaucracy flailing wildly to justify its own existence. Minus its periodic disappointments, NASA might just seem a bit quiet; with them, it seems desperate, and calls precisely the wrong sort of attention to its more modest discoveries.

Just when you thought it was safe…

This latest misstep has taken an otherwise triumphant press release and turned it into headlines focused purely on the letdown. That’s doubly frustrating since it comes soon after the wonderful “7 Minutes of Terror” campaign that accompanied the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars. That was a professionally produced video with a cool concept, strong execution, and above all a focus on making the public understand not just the facts but the drama. It was epic, and it made the scientists at NASA into limit-pushing bad-asses. It painted space as the sort of America-galling obstacle that it hasn’t been since JFK was shot. Until this latest announcement, it was really beginning to seem that NASA had learned its lesson.

The Curiosity campaign had flaws all its own, however. It’s bewildering that a multi-billion-dollar mission like the Curiosity launch got live coverage with less activity and pizzazz than a web stream from a college radio station. Additionally, while it’s certainly important to get some quick, blurry images to check the rover’s cameras, how hard would it have been to hold off releasing images for an extra day, so the first picture could be awe-inspiring? How much more would NASA have gained if the first shot from Curiosity was of a Marian sunset, rather than a blurry wheel? NASA speaks in the language of firsts, and since Curiosity is but a distant eighth in the race to the Martian surface, our space explorers cannot rely on the public’s unquestioning fascination. And they ought to know that by now.

This leads us to ask whether it’s right for NASA to alter its missions to campaign for public support — and thus funding. Some would argue that it should stick to the science as strictly as possible — that to include cameras aimed at capturing images for mass consumption, or give precious mission funding to some outside advertising firm, would detract from the scientific validity of its work. Others argue that a government institution has no business using its tax allowance to convince the public to give them additional revenue. All I know is that if the Moon landing hadn’t been a national project, man might still not have gotten there.

With the current air of cynicism surrounding the practicality of Mars exploration, it’s hard to imagine widespread support for any plan to actually visit or populate the Red Planet. If NASA wants support for such a mission in a few years, now is when it needs to start drumming up support. It needs to embed itself once again in the minds of Americans as a symbol of adventure and of physical and intellectual mastery of the universe. It has to get people inspired again, not just for the practicalities, but also for the principles of space travel.

NASA used to be in the business of awe. Every step away from that has been a mistake.

Now read: Why we need a space program