Today I took a tour at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. JPL deals with unmanned exploration vehicles and is responsible to such famous crafts as Voyager 1&2 ( and I learned today that Voyager 2 was launched before Voyager 1, but Voyager 1 moves faster thus is further away. In fact, Voyager 1 is just now leaving our solar system. ), the Mars Rovers (currently the Curiosity rover, though Opportunity is still working), Cassini (which explored Saturn and it’s moons like Titan, which is interesting because as wikipedia puts it “It is the only natural satellite known to have a dense atmosphere,^[8] and the only object other than Earth for which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found”, and of course JPL has had many other missions.

Some of the highlights of the tour were the moon artifacts (moon rock and space shuttle debris, show here in the prism)he,

the clean room (picture above), and the control center. The control center was fascinating. It is a futuristic looking room full of computers where a team monitors the activities of the unmanned rovers 24 hours a day.

This room is the brain. It is strange that I like representations of what is happening in space- video feed and data, more than the mechanics of the rovers going into space. I guess right now technology is the only way for us to see these things. It is as if we are lost in a strange representational reality.

I learned that there is not only google earth, but a google Mars! Cool! And an interactive online look at all the JPL missions, so you can view the launch, where each craft is currently at, etc. There are some pretty neat things to check out on JPLs website. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

I did not learn of any alien origins, though they did restrict us to certain quarters and kept a tight watch on us to keep us from wandering off course, haha. So maybe next time…

The tour guides really know their stuff (probably because they actually work on the missions and have been at JPL for many many years). I would recommend the tour to anyone interested in unmanned space crafts and can wait the 5+ months it takes to get in on their waiting list. Really cool stuff.