Earth | Jennifer Kaplan

I’ve been trying to write this post for about 24 hours now, and I just can’t. I can’t find the words to express how incredible and amazing an utterly mind blowing the experience of going to a NASA Social was… Maybe the words will come to me once I’ve had more time to process the experience, but for now here are some of my pictures, they’ll have to tell the story for me.

The Von Karman Auditorium was “home base” for us. How do you decorate your auditorium? Well, if you’re JPL you decorate with space craft…

: Cassini

: Explorer

: Huygens

: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

: SMAP

: Voyager (For the record I was NOT the first person in the room to call her “V’ger!”)

: The Golden Record (Does this count as a selfie?)

The list of speakers we heard was impressive. Another attendee said something about how everyone was so excited to have us there at JPL and share their work with us, and that was so true. Everyone was fascinating and I know I missed at least half of everything between trying to listen, take pictures, and tweet all at the same time. I tried to be good with details, but if I’ve gotten anything wrong in this post please let me know in the comments.

A 2 hour portion of the program was broadcast on NASA TV and has been uploaded to you tube. (Start around 16:30. For some reason the beginning is just a title card for a long time.)

Another piece of the program:

: Stephanie Smith, Courtney O’Connor, and Veronica McGregor welcome us to the “Earth Now” NASA Social

: Jim Graf, Dep. Dir. Earth Science Directorate, JPL starts us out talking about Earth Science at NASA

: Erika Podest & Narendra Das, SMAP Research Scientists

: Doug Ellison, JPL Visualization Producer talks “Eyes on the Earth”

: “Science Selfie of Earth” 😉

: Howard Eisen, RapidScat Project Manager and Ernesto Rodriguez, RapidScat Project Scientist

: Josh Willis, JPL Oceanographer & Climate Scientist talks Oceans, Climate & Jason-3

: Annmarie Eldering, OCO-2 Dep. Project Scientist and Mike Gunson, OCO-2 Project Scientist talk about OCO-2 (“A *carbon* copy of OCO!”)

: Ziad Haddad, Supervisor, Radar Science and Joe Turk, Precipitation Scientist talk about Global Precipitation Measurement

: Felix Landerer, Research Scientist and Graeme Stephens, Dir., Center for Climate Sciences talk IPCC

: Annie Richardson and Stephanie Smith end the day on a fun note…

: …Climate Jeopardy!

: General Larry D. James, Deputy Director of JPL.

: Veronica McGregor

: Stephanie Smith starts the speaker program on day 2

: Ashwin Vasavada, Deputy Project Scientist on Mars Science Laboratory gives us a Curiosity update

: “I’m a huge fan of this project!” – Bobak Ferdowsi

: Suzy Dodd, Project Manager on Voyager gives us an update. Voyager’s mission was supposed to last 4 years. She launched in 1977 and she’s still going! “Voyager is an ambassador on a goodwill mission” says Suzy.

: Voyager has many features, including an 8 Track. The phone in your pocket has more memory than Voyager.

: Hearing from Kevin Hand who is in Alaska right now designing an underwater rover. We watched video of methane bubbles trapped under the ice being lit on fire!

: Saying goodbye at the end of day 2. I didn’t want to leave.

When we arrived on day 2 there were parts on our tables. Actual spacecraft parts! And there were scientists and engineers all throughout the room to explain the parts and demonstrate NASA’s various apps.

(If you see a table tent in the photo it was just the table name, it isn’t connected to the part on the table.)

: So cute!

: Bobak explains how Curiosity’s cables were cut

: I’m in this picture if you know where to look

: Does this look like some sort of Klingon weapon to anyone else?

And of course while we were in the room I had to take the obligatory “pretending I work at NASA” picture.

We had a speaker on Monday who was not in the program. LeVar Burton who was at JPL to shoot a PSA graciously made time to stop and talk to us.

Our time at JPL wasn’t all speakers, we were treated to tours of some amazing places…

The JPL Museum complete with scientists and demonstrations

: Life size Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity)

: Life Size Sojourner Rover. She’s so cute! I want a stuffed version of her to sit with the Enterprise and Space Shuttle on my bed. 🙂

: “In 1969, the Apollo 12 crew brought back this piece of Surveyor 3‘s surface sampler. It was used to dig trenches in the Moon’s surface to learn about the lunar soil.”

: Moon rock brought back from the Moon by the Apollo 16 astronauts in 1972.

: Meteorites from asteroid Vesta found in Antarctica

: Kepler (1/20 scale)

: Spitzer Space Telescope (1/8 scale)

: Hubble Space Telescope (1/25 scale)

: Magellan (1/25 scale)

: Mariner 10 (1/10 scale)

: Galileo

: “Galileo carried a four-track 114MB digital magnetic tape recorder to store its data before transmitting it to Earth.”

The Deep Space Network Mission Control

: This is “The Center of the Universe” because all data from out in the universe comes through this room

: The station Bobak Ferdowsi was sitting at the night of Curiosity’s landing

: Same for Adam Steltzner

: Geordi?

: My “selfie” skills need work

They showed us a video of the room on Curiosity’s landing night, while we were sitting in that room. I got a little misty-eyed. Dare Mighty Things, indeed…

The Spacecraft Assembly Building

And the Mars Yard.

(I have no idea where this originally came from, but I’ve seen it online a few times and it always cracks me up!)

I’ve done a lot of really cool things in my life. This was the coolest.

I think I took about 300 pictures in the Mars Yard alone, I was really excited to be there!

: This may just be the cutest sign I’ve ever seen!

: Curiosity stops every meter and a half to take pictures. I do that too. She is plotting best course to take, I’m just easily distracted!

: Those holes in her wheel spell out a trail of morse code as she roves around.

: Curiosity’s twin on Earth is called Maggie. (This one doesn’t have the nuclear generator.)

: These wheels are the old design, which had “JPL” on them. NASA wasn’t too hot on that idea apparently and asked for a change. The engineers at JPL complied, but NASA didn’t find out until it was too late that the new design said “JPL” in morse code. (Does this count as the first graffiti on Mars?)

: Meet “Scarecrow.” She is just Curiosity’s frame. It makes up for the weight differential between Earth and Mars.

Hangin’ out with my new pal Curiosity! (okay, Maggie)

JPL is a really beautiful place, in addition to all of the awesome science happening there…

: Science-y street names

: Deer live at JPL, here’s one just kinda hanging out 😉

: It was a beautiful day. (If you look at the bottom of the picture you can see @TinaCassler waving!)

Here are the official group photos from JPL. (Click to see various sizes, up to and including ginormous!)

Normal picture

“Goofy” picture. (Not that much different) 😉

With “NASA Mohawk Guy” and space cutie, Bobak Ferdowsi

Now back to real life, but I sure could get used to being treated like a VIP at JPL every day! 🙂

Health update: These two days were very hard on my body, especially the 2nd day. I’m not sure how long it will take me to recover (so to speak) but everything was more than worth it! The staff at JPL had a golf cart standing by to take me where I needed to go, and other than a few places I was able to sit down when I needed to. No one made me feel singled out or like ‘that disabled lady’ (you’d be surprised how often well-meaning people do this) and I was able to be just one of the group. And woo-hoo I didn’t fall even once while I was there! 🙂 Special thanks to a wonderful friend who played chauffeur both days so I was able to take pain meds when I needed to and not have to worry about driving later. ❤

One thing I learned over the course of the event is exactly how bad my “selfie” skills are, so there are not that many pictures with me in them. Here are some pictures other people have posted.

@VickySvyrydyuk posted this photo of @susankitchens, myself, and @thisDianeNorris.