JPL Visit
Today a friend of the Guy's gave us a guided personal tour of JPL, and we got to see Curiosity, the newest Mars rover, in its clean room before it gets shipped to the blast-off point.
I've got some pictures of it:
This is the Curiosity itself. The other landing components are shown here:
It was funny that all those people in the white suits in the Ultra Clean Room (cleaner than an operating theater) started leaving for lunch en masse while we watched.
There's a video up that the Guy animated that NASA put up on UTube. It's not all the material that he animated, but it shows some of the highlights. Another version will up later. Anyway, we saw a lot more; full sized, half-sized models of other deep space exploration vessels (like Voyager and Galileo) and the practice rooms where the operators learn how to use Curiousity's arms and other external equipment. So cool!
And we also saw a moon rock and this mostly-air gel used to catch comet samples and as insulation on the rovers.
Here's the Aerogel. Read the link. MORE COOL!
The moon rock is encased in a solid lucite/plastic pyramid and locked down securely into the exhibit. I am so totally nerded and geeked out right now.
I'm going to have to make a few scrapbook pages about this one. Yayz!
I've got some pictures of it:
This is the Curiosity itself. The other landing components are shown here:
It was funny that all those people in the white suits in the Ultra Clean Room (cleaner than an operating theater) started leaving for lunch en masse while we watched.
There's a video up that the Guy animated that NASA put up on UTube. It's not all the material that he animated, but it shows some of the highlights. Another version will up later. Anyway, we saw a lot more; full sized, half-sized models of other deep space exploration vessels (like Voyager and Galileo) and the practice rooms where the operators learn how to use Curiousity's arms and other external equipment. So cool!
And we also saw a moon rock and this mostly-air gel used to catch comet samples and as insulation on the rovers.
Here's the Aerogel. Read the link. MORE COOL!
The moon rock is encased in a solid lucite/plastic pyramid and locked down securely into the exhibit. I am so totally nerded and geeked out right now.
I'm going to have to make a few scrapbook pages about this one. Yayz!