Steve and I have been trying to tour JPL for years. All the planets aligned for us to get there today and Scott and Lynne were eager to join in the fun.
These tours run approximately once per week on Monday or Wednesday on an alternating basis. Visitor Day Tours are generally held at 1:00 PM and last for 2.5 hours. The walking distance for the tour is approximately 0.8 miles with multiple flights of stairs.
We began the tour with a history lesson by watching a multimedia presentation entitled Journey to the Planets and Beyond, which provided an overview of the Laboratory’s activities and accomplishments. On Halloween 1936, five grad students studying at Caltech and two amateur rocket enthusiasts drove out to a dry canyon wash in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains and helped jump-start the Space Age. It took them four attempts to light a liquid rocket engine. But the result was encouraging enough to keep going and to build more rockets, which led to an institution where this kind of work could be done every day -- the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
JPL grew up with the Space Age and helped bring it into being. It is a place where science, technology, and engineering intermix in unique ways: to produce iconic robotic space explorers sent to every corner of the solar system, to peer deep into the Milky Way galaxy and beyond, and to keep a watchful eye on our home planet. Analyzing the data pouring back from these machine emissaries, scientists around the world continue to discover how the universe, the solar system, and life formed and evolved.
We actually had the amazing opportunity to watch the newest Mars Rover being built.
Its launch window is July 17 - Aug. 5, 2020. It will leave Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida, and land (hopefully) on Feb. 18, 2021 at the Jezero Crater.
The mission duration is at least one Mars year (about 687 Earth days). So very, very cool.
Next stop was at the very interesting von Karman Visitor Center.
This museum tells the history of JPL and its missions. It’s set up like a journey through the planets. At each planet, there’s information about the spacecraft that have visited them.
All of the displays surround the 17-foot-tall, life-sized model of the Galileo spacecraft.
We were intrigued by this aerogel. a silicon-based solid made of 99.8% air. It was used on Stardust to trap fast moving comet particles and it also insulates the electronics on the Mars Rover. Wild stuff.
The infrared images of us made me think of Andy Warhol's work.
Our guide, Nicky, pointed out the interesting pattern on the Curiosity rover's tires. When it took its first test stroll in 2012, it beamed back pictures of its accomplishment in the form of track marks in the Martian soil. Careful inspection of the tracks reveals a unique, repeating pattern, which the rover can use as a visual reference to drive more accurately in barren terrain. The pattern is Morse code for JPL. The purpose of the pattern was to create features in the terrain that can be used to visually measure the precise distance between drives. Beyond cool!
Our final, and truly exceptional, stop was at the Space Flight Operations Facility (SFOF). This is where spacecraft tracking and scientific data are received and processed from JPL's Deep Space Network.
The SFOF is an active NASA facility supporting various ongoing NASA projects including the tracking of the Voyager Spacecraft. It has continually been modified and its equipment upgraded since it was built and put into operation in 1964.
The scale of the achievements of NASA's planetary exploration program over the last fifty-five years is staggering. Like the great early explorers of human history, Columbus, Magellan, Balboa, Cortes, and Champlain the unmanned space craft of NASA have opened new worlds to human understanding and comprehension.
This has been an afternoon of knowledge and discovery. One thing quite unique thing we learned about was the peanut tradition/superstition, started in the 1960s during JPL’s Ranger missions. The first six Ranger spacecraft failed during launch or while leaving orbit, but on the 7th launch, someone brought peanuts into mission control, and the mission succeeded. It’s been a tradition at JPL launches and landings ever since. Fun tidbit!
The Space Flight Operations Facility for this period of time has been at the heart of this operation. Through the achievements of modern technology and communications, the entire human family was able to travel to the planets and experience the thrill of discovery. This Facility is the symbol of this technology and the resource most closely associated with the unmanned planetary exploration program of the JPL and NASA, hence its Historic Landmark designation in 1985.
We booked this JPL tour in May. And while the wait was a long one, the anticipation led to an exceptional afternoon. This is free. This is showcasing our tax dollars at work. It educated. It entertained. It wowed. It was so worth the wait. Yes, I'm going to say it... it was out-of-this-world. A must for all.
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1 comments:
Hello, Is it possible to get to the parking on no tour days to take photos of the entrance and the outside
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