ART+SCIENCE 2019

Blog #7 By Makayla Gallimore   I was so excited to have the opportunity to visit JPL for the second time!! What really intrigued me was going to the OPs lab and talking to Sasha. The fact that we could virtually set foot on Mars and walk around and even draw with our hands is out of this world, literally!! Wow what a concept! So cool! I definitely felt like a kid in a candy store! I could bend down and see the detail of each rock and even change the size of the Mars rover. This was one of the coolest pieces of technology that I have seen by far. It just goes to show how much technology has evolved and it also shows us a glimpse of what is to come in the future. The astounding inventions that JPL has shown in front of our very eyes has inspired me a lot.  We also had the pleasure of discussing the new project that is proposed to last 200 years. It was fun collaborating with JPL scientists,engineers, computer scientists and more! We got to give our input and ideas ab...

Olivia Collins November 20, 2019  The second time at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab was different from our first trip. Unlike having a tour of more projects and rooms, we were in a lecture with the A Team. This collaborative team works on the Tree of Life Project that we learned briefly about from out first field trip. We spent predominantly our whole time at JPL in this brainstorming session with the A Team. The Tree of Life Project seemed to only get more confusing for all of us in the end. Julia Christensen lectured again about the premise of the project and then one of the people outside of the project explained the project. This woman’s explanation helped clear some aspects of it up but even this woman seemed confused on a lot of the logistics between the tree and the cubesats.  We then had a question portion where we were all asked to write questions on sticky notes. Many of us had similar questions: Why does a cubesat need to be sent to space if a sound can be made ...

The main aspect of this week’s JPL trip was discussing Julia Christensen’s Tree of Life project with the A-Team. While it was cool to see how the A-Team works and get a feel for their space, I had a hard time grasping the tree of life concept and execution. It seemed like everyone else in the class had a similar response so I didn’t feel too terrible about it. One of my main overarching questions is why-- why send a satellite to space to garner information from trees, especially if we already have NISAR working effectively? It’s hard for me to see the true intention of the tree of life project. It doesn’t really seem like an art piece to me, and it also doesn’t seem like it is going to create a breakthrough discovery for science. I feel like the result they are going for could just be a low budget project, not linked to JPL at all. Another issue I had was: how are we getting info from the actual tree? It seemed to me that the information was coming from sensors that detect light. To m...

The majority of our time during this visit to JPL consisted of working with the A-Team to go over the Tree of Life project, which we were introduced to during our first visit last month. The last time we learned about it, I left feeling really confused about exactly what the project was and how it has relevance, so being able to inquire more on this trip was helpful. That being said, though, I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around what the goal of the mission is. It's clear that they were inspired by how we can eventually create a mission that has the ability to arrive at Proxima B, and the drive behind the Tree of Life is this idea of time and longevity. However, the team still doesn't seem clear about how the information they gain from this project can be applied to a future mission involving Proxima B. Or if they do know, they aren't effectively articulating it to the general public, which I believe is going to be vital for keeping interest in the 200 year ...

Oldest tree 5062 (Live Science) The cube Sat (JPL) The Tree of Life Project: Problems of Longevity in Society The tree of life project mission is founded by the Art and Technolgy LAB grant and is a collaboration between artist Julia Christensen and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. There are many different pieces to this project, and there is a lot of information that we still need to understand to understand this mission. In this blog post, I will focus on the longevity aspect of the project. This mission is supposed to last 200 years, seeing as this is both one of the longest-running art projects and one of the longest-running JPL missions there are some exciting conversations regarding what it means for something to last for 200 years. When talking with the artist, Julia and the rest of the A-team at JPL, one of the main questions that came up was how is the public supposed to interact with this project, what will it mean us now, and what will it mean to us 200 years from now? ...

JPL #2 Nicole Daskas This visit to JPL was heavily focused on Julia Christensen’s art collaboration with NASA. The project, titled “The Tree of Life”, will be a 200 year piece in which the sound of a tree will be sent into orbit 1,000 km outside of Earth. The sound, created with radar, changes based on the conditions the tree is living in. This sound, called a song, will be different for every tree. There are many aspects of this project that are still undetermined, as technology will have to advance for another 40 years before the cubesats with the songs can be sent into space. We were encouraged to ask questions about the “Tree of Life”, and everyone voiced their concerns surrounding the project. While there are definitely confusing and questionable aspects about this piece, it was valuable to see the way the team brainstormed and problem-solved. I appreciated that they valued the opinions of young artists and wanted to hear what the class had to say about their work. It was str...

         This trip to Jet Propulsion Laboratory was quite a different experience compared to the last one. Coming into the field trip, I was not prepared to endure a lecture that lasted so long. After finding out the lecture was going to be about the Tree of Life project, I was looking forward to it. I had questions going to this lecture. Information was not provided by Julie Christensen during our first visit. Tony Freeman introduced the Tree of Life project by having everyone introduce themselves and name their favorite tree. I thought this was an exciting way to start the lecture, but also made me more intrigued and knowledgable about different types of trees. Freeman introduced Julia Christensen, in which she began to discuss the Tree of Life project, focusing on longevity. She started out by explaining this idea of upgrade culture in our society. Technology is continually changing and becoming “better.” This idea of “better” draws people in to purchase ne...

Sammy Keane Blog #7  Since I was unable to attend the second JPL field trip due to unfortunate events, I found myself looking throughout NASA’s dense website. Juno, NASA’s mission to Jupiter, really stood out to me. Launched on August 5, 2011, the goal of this mission was to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Juno is a solar-powered spacecraft that’s observations will lead to a better understanding of the formation of our solar system and planetary systems discovered around other stars (eyes on the solar system). In addition to that, Juno would look for solid planetary core, map its magnetic field, measure water and ammonia in its atmosphere, and finally observe auroras (nasa.gov). Juno did not arrive at Jupiter until July 4th of 2016. Reading into Mission Juno allowed me to understand more about Jupiter, a planet that I before knew nothing about. For example, written on October 24,19, data from Juno has helped scientists discover that the swirling ban...