Blog 6- JPL #1 Olivia Collins

Olivia Collins

Having a field trip to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was something I never imagined myself going to. Friends who are in science majors and science fields showed their jealousy that our class had the experience to go. The car I traveled with was so prepared and ready to go we got to JPL 30 minutes before everyone else. Going first to the clean room was the best way to start the day since we could see the people in their bunnysuits working. The 10,000 particles clean room, given this name due to the fact that only that many particles can exist in space, had the departing feature of the 2020 Mar Rovers. Even though the actual Rover was not currently in the clean room the machine that is going to drop it on Mars was just as impressive. Seems like a safer landing from the animations we were shown of the inflatable bouncing feature that has been used in the past. 
As far as a favorite mission, after my previous blog post on Saturn it would have to be Cassini. Although I was already familiar with the work of the Cassini I did not know what the actual probe looked like. The model, which was a bit smaller than the actual probe, showed that it was covered in gold material. This made many of us wonder why some satellites are black and some are gold. The gold blanket is used to reflect the light to protect it from the extreme thermal environment it was going to live in. Cassini is responsible for taking all the best known photos of Saturn and its rings. The mission also focused on learning more about the natural satellites that surrounds Saturn, in doing this it captured images of Saturn’s many moons, including Titan and Enceladus. Cassini’s journey had to unfortunately come to an end by plummeting itself into Saturn’s atmosphere marking the end of the mission. 
Hearing from Sarah Malcotte about the Insight area for Mars was also one of the highlights of the day. Although we talked to her briefly, hearing her talk about how they test different environments for model Rovers was amazing. She told us that that they had tested the arm for the Rover for months and that it had just worked for the first time from inside the Insight. Much like the rest of our class I also was facinated when she was asked where other life in the Solar System could be and she responded with sea monsters in Europa. 
I am excited for the next time we go to JPL since we missed the museum and to hear more about the Tree of Life Project.

Here is a link from JPL's website more on how they made the gold blanket that covered Cassini!
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/97/csblank.html

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