JPL open house (2012)

Dear Mrs. Rita,

 

This Sunday I went to the famous JPL Open House, which actually happens once a year. I just learned JPL, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, exists as NASA laboratory. It sounded so cool to me. My friends from school, my mom, my mom’s friend and I spent almost whole day over there. Even though the lines were very long, it was worth waiting to check out those interesting information in and models in each building. And now I am so excited to share some of the places I have been to.

In the lobby of Mars Science Laboratory, there was a full scale model of the Mars Rover, Curiosity. This rover was launched on November 26,2011, at 10:02 a.m. It will be travelling 354 million mile in space to reach Mars. Curiosity is expected to land on Mars on August 5, 2012. This means the trip is 225 days long. Isn't it that long trip? It is launched to Mars to see if it supports life. I hope it land on Mars safely as the previous ones. The scientist there told me it will enter the Mars atmosphere at 81 miles above the ground. And it will free fall about 7 miles above the ground at 900 mph. At that point, a SUPER heavy duty parachute comes out to slow the rover it down a lot, but not enough to land. After that the rover is dropped down with a jetpack. The jetpack flies it down to 20 meters above the ground. Then nylon cables drop the rover down as gently as it can. I think that is a really smart design for landing. Will you also check the landing on August 5 as I will?

There was also a movie narrated by Harrison Ford, one of my favorite Hollywood actors. It was about the journey through our solar system and beyond into other solar systems and even different galaxies. Can you imagine how far away that would be?! I think they should make a new unit of measurement called trillile. And one trillile would be equal to one trillion miles. That would be much easier to measure distances between galaxies.

Another very interesting place was the Deep Space Operations. It was a very big building with lots of control rooms containing valuable information and high-tech equipment used to launch a rocket. There was also a countdown of the Curiosity rover land on Mars, saying it was 56 days and 6 hours landing on Mars. I just want to know the results!

We also visited JPL's Spacecraft Fabrication Facility. I got to hold different metals JPL uses to build parts of rovers. Some of them were aluminum, titanium, brass, etc. Don't be tricked by their size, for baby metals might squish you into a pancake(just kidding)! There were several more tables containing other designs made of metal. Then we went up some stairs into a narrow hall that we could walk through. There were signs telling about the different machines and what learning and training you would need to become a machinist. In the next room, there were two robotic arm around an object to make sure each and every part is put in the right position.

I was also fascinated to check a model of a robot, Athlete for future missions. This robot had many legs that they could lift out of large cracks that it might get stuck in. Then it will keep on operating, and not stop like the rover Spirit did.

I had a lot of fun there and also saw many new cool things about Mars and the rovers we've sent up there. Please check out the attachment. It is a 3D picture with me and the rover Curiosity pretending to be on the surface of Mars. You could have your 3D glasses on so the image will be very impressive. If you've never been to JPL, I recommend you to go next year with Winona and Nick!

Sincerely,

Justin W.