It's a good question. I suppose from NASA's point of view, there are two factors: one, contests like this get people interested in space data; two, maybe some

It's a good question. I suppose from NASA's point of view, there are two factors: one, contests like this get people interested in space data; two, maybe some useful app for regular citizens will come from this. It's like the Netflix challenge (even the winners of the $1M prize were losers if your metric is $/hour) or the DARPA Grand Challenges (which have used a lot of unpaid undergrad and grad student labor). NASA spends a lot of money developing data services for hard-core science users (e.g., for ocean data: http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/), so it's not like they're trying to get off scot-free. But it doesn't really spend on services for curious citizens. The existing evaluation process for science data services is not well-suited for judging citizen-facing apps/services. There would be a bunch of science nerds wondering if it would be OK to release uncalibrated data, or if the map projection selected was OK, etc. Earth science data gets in front of citizens more easily because of weather and climate, but planetary data has been under-exposed.