At a time when many people both around the world and here at home question what America stands for, comes the Artemis II Lunar Mission. The stunning photos, fascinating live mission commentary, and sheer adventure of humans traveling to the moon for the first time since 1972 has the world buzzing.
Many of my friends who live in other countries have asked me what America is up to, what with the tariffs, and threatening other countries, and starting a war, and the ugly rhetoric coming from the top of the administration. Many people think America has lost it's way.
However, in the past week, many of those same people also reached out to say how much they loved Artemis II.
While I did some interviews about the PR aspects of Artemis II this week, but I was reluctant to write about it here until the astronauts safely splashed down last night.
NASA is America’s best PR
NASA is a rare government agency with a massive fan base!
It’s a US government agency with over 100 million Instagram followers. Look at most any large gathering of people and you’re likely to see a NASA t-shirt or cap. Tens of millions of people have shared NASA photos and videos on their social feeds because multimedia resources are free to the public for non-commercial use.
I’ve been fascinating by lunar space travel since I was a kid. I was eight years old when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to step foot on the moon. While other kids my age focused on sports teams, I became an Apollo fan. I still am!
I wrote Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program about what I call the most successful marketing and public relations campaign in history, featuring heroic astronauts, press-savvy rocket scientists, enthusiastic reporters, deep-pocketed defense contractors, and Tang. Marketing the Moon was an inspiration for two films, Chasing the Moon, a three-part PBS American Experience documentary and Fly Me to the Moon, a big-budget Hollywood romantic comedy.
I've met and spent time with more than half of the 12 humans who have walked on the lunar surface.
Marketing the USA
Several years ago, I was honored to spend a day at NASA headquarters in Washington DC, where I delivered a talk to the public relations team. I also discussed public relations strategies with then NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, sharing lessons learned from the Apollo lunar program that could be applied to the Artemis program.
“NASA is unique in the sense that we are constantly doing stunning things that captures the imagination of a very enthusiastic fan base,” former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told me. “We can do amazing things, but if we're not communicating about it, nobody cares. You have to constantly share your victories, and NASA is really good at sharing its victories. It just so happens that our victories are quite magnificent.”
Traveling to the moon certainly qualifies as a magnificent achievement! Bridenstine knew how valuable the photos and video of lunar missions could be as a PR tool for America.
In a polarized world where some in the US government want to force other countries to bend to our demands, along comes NASA and the Artemis II mission serving to bring the entire world together for a few days.
“When we do these stunning achievements, it's on the cover of every newspaper worldwide, even in countries that are not friendly to the United States,” Bridenstine told me. “They talk about NASA. It's a tool of national power that helps change the perception of young people all over the world towards the United States of America.”
IMAGE: NASA. The Artemis II crew captured this view of Earth setting on April 6, 2026, as they flew around the Moon. As the astronauts flew over the Moon’s far side, the crew photographed and described terrain features including impact craters, ancient lava flows, and surface cracks and ridges formed as the Moon slowly evolved over time. They also noted differences in color, brightness and texture, which provide clues that help scientists understand the composition and history of the lunar surface. The image is reminiscent of the iconic Earthrise image taken by astronaut Bill Anders 58 years earlier as the Apollo 8 crew flew around the Moon. The Apollo 8 mission was the first crewed spacecraft to circumnavigate the Moon.
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