Communications and Digital

With the COVID pandemic closing the Museum’s locations for part of the year and still impacting people’s ability to visit the Museum in person even once they were able to reopen, the Museum once again relied on digital channels to share its collection and expertise with its community. 

By the Numbers 

• Museum social media posts received 9.8 million engagements in 2021. 
• The Museum’s social media accounts gained 130,000 followers in 2021, going from 960,000 followers total to 1,090,000 followers total. 
• Blogs posts received 1.2 million page views in 2021.  
• Collection pages received over 1.6 million page views in 2021. 

Anniversary Campaigns 

2021 included a number of significant aviation and space anniversaries. Anticipating increased interest and understanding its role in educating our audience about these moments in aerospace history, the Museum created special digital content about these moments: 

• 60th Anniversary of the First People In Space: April and May 2021 marked the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in space and Alan Shepard becoming the first American in space. The Museum offered a month of human spaceflight themed educational resources and refreshed the “50 Years of Human Spaceflight” online exhibit to reflect 60 years while also leveraging updated digital storytelling tools. This included a deep-dive page comparing Gagarin and Shepard’s two history-making spaceflights. During the anniversary period, the refreshed pages received over 4,000 visits and above average time on page. These anniversaries were also covered on the museum’s social media. 
• 100th Anniversary of Bessie Coleman Earning Her Pilot's License: June 2021 was the 100th anniversary of Bessie Coleman becoming the first African American woman to earn a pilot’s license. To mark this anniversary, the Museum created a hub page that united a variety of new and legacy Bessie Coleman content, and published three new blogs. The hub page was shared with our audiences, as well as through targeted outreach to educators and museums. During the anniversary period, website content about Bessie Coleman was viewed over 7,500 times with a significant amount of time spent on the pages. 
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• The museum also shared Coleman’s story across its social media. A Facebook post about Bessie Coleman became the museum’s most successful Facebook post to date and based on comments on social media posts, the museum introduced a number of people to Coleman’s story who had never heard it before. 
• 50th Anniversary of Apollo 15: July 2021 marked 50 years since the Apollo 15 mission. The anniversary was the subject of the Museum's monthly educational theme, accompanied by a suite of programming on the topic. It was one of the Museum’s most popular monthly themes with over 12,000 pageviews. In a continuation of other #Apollo50 content, the museum created and posted more social content about Apollo 15 than ever before, increasing followers’ knowledge about this later mission in the Apollo program. 

Current Events

The landing of Mars rover Perseverance on the Red Planet in February 2021 and the successful first flight of Mars helicopter Ingenuity in April 2021 were both big moments for space exploration in 2021, and the Museum’s digital and social media reacted accordingly:  

• Social media coverage: The Museum’s social media content surrounding these moments was highly successful. The Museum gained a higher than usual number of followers surrounding the landing and were featured in Twitter’s official Moment for the landing. This success reflects the Museum’s current and potential audience’s desire for coverage of current events.  
• Longer-form educational content: Education’s monthly theme: “Exploring Other Worlds” offered educational resources connected to Mars and planetary science, including the premiere of an Exploring Space Lectures series. The lecture, “Mars 2020 and the Importance of Planetary Protection,” was viewed over 3,000 times.  
• Website hub page: Uniting new programs and existing resources related to Perseverance in an easy to browse format, the hub page received over 20,000 visits, with a bounce rate 7% lower than the site average. 

Mars Rover Merchandise

The Museum collaborated with Smithsonian Enterprises to create exclusive limited-edition merchandise surrounding the Perseverance landing and Ingenuity flights on Mars. The products were released in two separate “merch drops” — one in February surrounding Perseverance’s touchdown on Mars and one in April surrounding Ingenuity’s flight. The 10-day Perseverance drop generated $176,000 in sales with 26% of purchases including an optional donation to the Museum and $146,000 in sales with 21% purchases including a donation. 

Object Photography

Work continued on the Museum’s Air and Space Photo initiative, made possible through the generous support of the Ryna and Melvin Cohen Family Foundation. Through the initiative, the Museum's photography team is capturing high-resolution images of the Museum’s iconic large aircraft and spacecraft and making them available to the public. Over 300 new high-resolution photographs of 23 small and large objects were captured and progress was made on capture and processing of two major museum artifacts.

Artifacts photographed in 2021 included the Manta Pterodactyl Fledgling, a McDonnell Douglas F/A-18C in Blue Angels livery, and an SR-71 full pressure suit type S1030. In 2021, Air and Space Photo content received nearly 8 million views on the website and social media content.