NASA’s user-friendly website is built to handle huge traffic loads
NASA’s website was last updated about 10 years ago, and it was time for a modernization for a variety of reasons. It wasn’t just pure age. The old site “was kind of a traditional homepage that focused on news releases and top-level government coverage,” Bowman said.
Additionally, NASA agencies were creating their own sites outside of the flagship store, complicating the user experience.
The new website focuses on fast page load times and search engine optimization, as well as accessibility and mobile readability. Topics are organized in an easy-to-understand manner to make it easy to search for things like “What time is the solar eclipse?” It can get people where they need to go, said Jason Townsend, NASA communications manager.
“We really tried to redo this from the top down, bottom up, front end, back end, the whole nine yards,” he says.
To support the traffic load on the website, which averages approximately 1 million views per day, the NASA team collaborated with Amazon Web Services to efficiently integrate the new content management system with existing live streaming solution providers. We have fine-tuned the service to: Same as the one used in 2017.
“When we were on the IT acquisition side, we were pricing about four times the Eclipse traffic in 2017 to inflate, so we guaranteed uptime up to that amount,” Bowman said. says. “We expect more traffic, but we are confident we can withstand it.”
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Performance test new technology before big events
To make sure the updated technology can handle the pressures, NASA is running tests based on its experience with the 2017 solar eclipse (when streaming finished successfully) and other traffic events such as launches and major news outlets. We reviewed the knowledge gained over the years from high-volume events. Meeting and Shuttle Tragedy.
Townsend said the team also compared the numbers to this year’s Super Bowl, the most-watched television broadcast in history, and streaming boosted the numbers.
The beta version of the website began in late July 2023, about two months before the October 14th annular solar eclipse. In an annular solar eclipse, the moon crosses the sun at its furthest point from Earth. This means that viewers will see a “ring of fire” effect because the moon does not cover the sun. The whole sun.
“This period was putting a lot of performance stress on the site to simulate peak traffic during the October solar eclipse,” Bowman says. “We knew all the modules would be fine-tuned by the time we were ready for public release in late September. We knew which ones were slow and which ones were fast.
“After all the performance testing we’ve done, the answer we’ve come to is that while the new site is new, it’s better equipped, more stable, and more ready to accept traffic than the old site. ”
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NASA learned technology lessons from previous solar eclipses
October’s solar eclipse, which drew 11 million views to the NASA site, gave NASA an opportunity to see how the site performs during a live event. The eclipse team adjusted his web infrastructure to handle updates and caching without interruption. stream.
“NASA will be broadcasting live from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time and will be ready to reach anyone, anywhere,” Townsend said. He may also be one of those relying on streaming (he will be out of the country on the day of the eclipse).
The stream will film from telescopes, NASA sites and other live cameras the entire path of the eclipse, stretching from the west coast of Mexico to Newfoundland, Canada, and diagonally across the United States.
Viewers can watch on nasa.gov, NASA’s mobile apps and social media, NASA TV, and a new service called NASA+.
Bowman will be working on the day of the solar eclipse, but he will be in a location that will experience a full solar eclipse. “This is the first time I’ve seen a solar eclipse directly,” she says. “I heard it was a life-changing event.”
