NASA Chooses Plucky Option B for Asteroid Redirect Mission, Space Policy Online

"Lightfoot was poised to reveal the Option A versus B choice in December, but when it came time for the press conference, said only that more time was needed. NASA has not publicly stated what came up at the last minute. Rumors are that Option B was the choice then, too. The December press conference was announced with 6 hours notice; today's notice was only 2 hours and the briefing was exactly at the same time as Dava Newman's nomination to be NASA Deputy Administrator was being considered by the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee (it was approved by the committee)."

NASA Public Affairs Is Not Interested in Dawn or Ceres, earlier post

"Dwayne Brown from NASA SMD PAO only gave trivial advance notice for media to register for a telecon regarding Dawn entering orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres. Dwayne sent a media advisory out at 12:56 pm ET for a 2:00 pm ET telecon - and only gave media 45 minutes to contact him for dial-in information. Smart move to send this out while half of the U.S. was eating lunch. Only 2 media actually dialed in to ask questions."

Keith's note: NASA has become increasingly gun shy about announcing its big decisions. It is also increasingly inept when it comes to assembling media briefings on these decisions - as well as major mission events. Recently they continually kicked the can down the road on commercial crew and totally bungled a Dawn event. And yet NASA gets all bent out of shape when the media does not pay attention to their news or the spin that they try to put on it. Duh, I wonder why.