Blog 7-- Dara Feller

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 me, that isn’t really communicating with a tree. I see this project running into several issues (especially with garnering public interest). Lastly, with the A-Team, we got a presentation from Dan Goods, another artist at the A-Team (I believe). I LOVED this presentation-- it was so inspiring to see another practicing artist using art and science. It was amazing to see the images and videos of his past work with his team, especially the NASA travel posters. It made me realize that a real part of NASA's presence in the public sphere is advertising and art!
My favorite part of this trip was the Ops Lab where we got to meet Sasha and experience AR. I had never really had an immersive AR experience so this was insanely cool (and a bit disorienting). My favorite aspect was “walking” on Mars. The fact that I could get close to the ground and actually see the grains of sand was incredible. The whole time I was just blown away by technology as a whole. How have we, as humans, not only put things into space but REPLICATED the experience for us on earth??? Essentially, the view of Mars was a blended version of photographs that the Curiosity Rover has taken. After combining these images, the viewer is able to experience a 3D view of the territory the rover has crossed. I couldn’t believe that real scientists and engineers were using this technology only an hour and a half away from me! The concept of AR or VR seemed so abstract to me until I experienced it. I was blown away. 
One of the interesting things I learned on this trip was when we visited the cleanroom again and got to see Curiosity 2020. I knew that a persisting problem with the current rover was driving over the terrain. Great strides have been taken to alter the wheels on the new rover, but I was still curious (haha, get it?) on how it would be able to move the way NASA wanted it to over these large Mars rocks. I learned from one of our guides that this rover actually has something similar to a helicopter blade underneath it so it can hover around Mars and avoid all the rocks! Again, this was another futuristic-existential crisis for me to grasp. How cool is it that we have a floating rover going to Mars??? 

Ultimately, JPL has been such an amazing experience that I know I am insanely lucky to have. My only wish is to one day, hold the aerogel and touch the moon rock. But we’ll see how that goes.

views of mars through the AR glasses
Vintage travel posters by Dan Goods' team
installations by Dan Goods' team

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