NASA needs to learn to better sell its image and purpose to the tax-paying public if it hopes to once again capture the hearts and minds of Americans during future space missions, media professionals told a presidential commission Thursday.

The inability to inspire the public, as well as policy makers, with the intrinsic attraction of space exploration is already a hindrance for NASA and will only grow over the decades needed to fulfill the President George W. Bush's space vision of sending humans back to the moon.

"There is a widely-held public perception that NASA is doing very little," said Daniel Stone, president and CEO of New York-based Space Holdings, Inc, the parent company of SPACE.com, Space News and Starry Night. "NASA has to sell itself to the American people."

Stone pointed out that NASA officials have said the space agency doesn't engage in marketing so much as it does public outreach.

"Outreach, itself, sounds a little like a request for sympathy," Stone said. "Marketing should not be a four-letter-word."

Stone and other media professionals spoke before the President's Commission on the Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy, a group appointed by President Bush to determine how NASA should approach the space vision.

Thursday's hearings were held at the Georgia Centers for Advanced Telecommunications Technology at Georgia Institute of Technology.

"It's clear that an outreach program of some type is needed," said commission chairman Eugene "Pete" Aldridge, Jr. "It's the idea of insuring that the American people understand the value of a space program."

To sustain the space vision, which will run through at least eight presidential terms, Americans must feel at least some ownership in their national space program, he added.

But some commissioners were hesitant to agree to an all out NASA marketing campaign.

Astrophysicist and commission member Neil deGrasse Tyson said he was concerned that by marketing itself, NASA would be forcing itself on an unwilling public.

"Where do you draw the line between marketing something people might be interested in and marketing something that is backwash," Tyson said. "Something where people say, 'Oh, now NASA thinks they have to sell it to me even though I don't want it.'"

The panel said NASA need not force their activities on the public, only package truthful and credible research in a more consumable format. The agency already has one of the prime attractions inherent to human space exploration, namely the humans themselves who will go.

"NASA needs to do a far better job on what is like to live and work in space," said Gary Robbins, a science writer for the Orange County Register in California. "The agency needs to put the 'human' back in 'human space exploration.'"

The public needs more exposure to astronauts like Michael Foale, currently part aboard the International Space Station on the Expedition 8 mission, to become more familiar with the human side of space exploration, Robbins said.

Robbins said that in 1986, when the Challenger space shuttle was lost, the accident was magnified by the fact that millions of Americans felt they were personally attached astronaut Christa McCauliffe, who died in the explosion.

"The tragedy of the Columbia accident was magnified by the fact that no one knew any of the astronauts who died," he added.

Robbins told commissioners that one of the first places NASA can start a more effective campaign to reach the public is online, where Internet users have quick access to interactive programs, research and mission information. One place to start, he added, would be to put a camera --  accessible via the web -- on a future moon rover.

"The reality is that SPACE.com is interesting, NASA.gov isn't," Robbins said.