Richard T. Par
Just thought I'd end this month by sharing pictures I took during a public tour, held on July 17, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge, California.
Unlike previous tours that I attended over the past couple of years, there was no spacecraft like Europa Clipper or the Perseverance Mars rover currently being built inside JPL's historic Spacecraft Assembly Facility. Instead, a science instrument known as ASTHROS (Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths) was being prepped for an upcoming high-altitude balloon mission that will deploy above Antarctica. The balloon that will send ASTHROS 130,000 feet (25 miles) into the stratosphere itself is pretty impressive; when fully-inflated, the helium-filled sphere will reach a diameter of 460 feet, which is about the size of Dodger Stadium here in Los Angeles!
While it's cool to see an airborne science instrument being constructed at JPL, it remains to be seen when the venerable laboratory will get to assemble a spaceborne payload (for a mission like Mars Sample Return) once again. Thanks to the loss of hundreds of laid-off employees and an uncertain NASA budget for next year thanks to Donald Trump, it may be quite a while till JPL gets to construct another robotic explorer that will venture somewhere in our Solar System.
In the meantime, JPL will just have to remain the "Center of the Universe" for current deep space missions that won't be affected by the lousy policies of a convicted felon in the White House. Carry on.
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
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