Brian Dunbar
Headquarters, Washington                                        June 21, 2002
(Phone: 202/358-0873)

RELEASE 02-116

NASA INTERNET SITES HONORED

 Two NASA Internet sites were honored this week with Webby Awards, sponsored 
by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. The Webby Awards 
recognize Web sites that are both aesthetically exceptional and which utilize 
technology to help build communities.

The NASA Home Page, which serves as the Agency's entryway into its more than 
four million public World Wide Web pages, won the Webby's People's Voice 
Award in the Government & Law category. The Earth Observatory, an interactive 
site that highlights news and imagery about NASA's Earth science research, 
won the People's Voice Award for Science.

The NASA Home Page, managed by the Office of Public Affairs at NASA 
Headquarters in Washington, is located on the Internet at: 
http://www.nasa.gov.

"We're very pleased that Internet users voted NASA these awards," said Glenn 
Mahone, Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs. "Since 1994, when people 
around the world were staying up late to see images of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 
colliding with Jupiter, the Internet has been an important means of 
fulfilling NASA's mission to inspire the next generation of explorers in ways 
that only NASA can."

The Earth Observatory, sponsored by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 
Greenbelt, Md., and the Office of Earth Science at NASA Headquarters, is 
online at: 
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov.

Voters who register through the Webby Awards site select the People's Voice 
winners. The academy also has panels of judges who select their choice for 
the top site in each category based on a variety of functional and esthetic 
criteria.

The two sites are the fourth and fifth NASA sites to be selected for this 
honor during the past six years. 

Previous winners include:
-- Mars Pathfinder (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/): 1998 People's Voice 
for Science
-- Science@NASA (http://science.nasa.gov): 1999 People's Voice for Science
-- Starchild (http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov): 1998 Webby for Education

The awards were announced June 18 in San Francisco. The full list of winners 
and nominees can be found on the Internet at:

http://www.webbyawards.com

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