Trip to JPL

JPL had an open house today, April 29,2023.  My youngest son David, his son Ben and I went and had a great time.  The most exciting for me was to see the Europa Clipper being built in the clean room.  This will travel to Jupiter's ice moon, and poke around looking for signs of living, or once living, organisms.

Other interesting exhibits were many early satellites, rovers and instrumentation.  The mission control was especially interesting. It operates 24/7 collecting signals from all the experiments that have travelled beyond the moon.  The furthest being Voyager which is a light day away.  Next to that room is the room where everyone cheers when exciting things, such as the successful landing of the Mars 2020 package occurs.

You can also see a peanut jar! After many US failures in the 1960's, peanuts were passed out for the launch of Ranger 7 and it was successful.  Tradition demands that peanuts are now passed out for every mission.

Ben enjoyed getting run over by a rover.  I enjoyed seeing myself on a thermal imager and David has been in love with space ever since he attended space camp when he was 11.

Here are a bunch of photos from the day.  I was not allowed to take my good telephoto camera, so these are all from phones.