LADEE Spacecraft Begins Collecting Lunar Atmosphere Data

writes:

November 21, 2013

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726


Rachel Hoover
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-4789


RELEASE 13-349

NASA Spacecraft Begins Collecting Lunar Atmosphere Data

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is ready to
begin collecting science data about the moon.

This is a peeve of mine. Why, oh why, do so many people use the present
tense when an event is in the past or still in the future? The headline
says that LADEE is now collecting lunar atmosphere data, which is
immediately contradicted by the first sentence of the article, which
states that it is going to do it soon.

I see this kind of mistake over and over, and I would think people whose
job it is to put out press releases would be more correct in their use
of language.