Thanks xStainDx. NASA's recent Mars expedition was a hit on the Web--in fact it was the agency's greatest hit of all time.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Thursday that during the past month and a half, the total number of visits to its home page, which hosted images and video feeds from the two recent rover landings on Mars, was greater than the total population of humans on Earth. NASA said its home page received 6.53 billion hits--the number of times someone pulls up a Web site--surpassing Earth's population of 6.3 billion people. The visitor numbers cover the period from Jan. 4, when the first rover, Spirit, landed, through Thursday.
Although the idea of using hits as a measurement of success went out the window during the dot-com bust, NASA thinks the numbers are still a milestone.
"To the best of our knowledge this is the biggest government event in the history of the Internet," NASA spokesman Glenn Mahone said in a statement. "We've passed the peak traffic for the IRS Web site during tax season and for NOAA's (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) site during Hurricane Isabel last fall."
View: Complete article at CNET News
News source: CNET News
