eLearning Collaborative

Mars Rover

This morning (August 11), the group of people working on our project got the opportunity to go on a tour of JPL, the Jet Propulsion Lab affiliated with NASA. There were life sized models of different space exploration vehicles including the Mars rovers, which are still currently on mars. JPL is located here in Pasadena and is more like a mini community set up like a college campus. On average there are 5000 people working there a day. We got to see the control room where there were employees controlling the rovers on Mars as well as Cassini and Voyager. In a part of one of the buildings that we toured, there was a giant room full of sand that simulated the surface of Mars. There, workers had an exact replica of a Mars rover that they practiced controlling and observed. It was so amazing to again be in a place where you can smell the knowledge coming from all corners of the room. JPL is a place where things are being formulated, built, and carried out- real life experiments that are currently impacting astrophyics.

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