Just thought I'd end this month with these photos that I took at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) annual open house near Pasadena, California on May 18. This marked the third time this year that I visited JPL (the first time being for a public tour back in February, and the second time being for a NASA Social event held in March), so there's really nothing new to share here. (But continue reading, anyway!) Obviously, you have the flight hardware for the Mars 2020 rover on display inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility (SAF), you have a glimpse of "The Center of the Universe" inside the Space Flight Operations Facility, you have cool snapshots of full-size replicas of the Curiosity and Mars Exploration Rovers in the main courtyard, and you have interesting exhibits pertaining to NASA's search for more (and potentially habitable) exoplanets. Actually, that last one is new to me!
I'm thinking about going back to JPL later this year (to check out the Mars 2020 rover one last time before it's shipped to its launch site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida next January or February), but this might be the last time for a while that I visit this cool NASA field center. By the time the next Explore JPL is held next May or June, the Mars 2020 spacecraft will already be on the other side of the country—getting prepped for its July launch to the Red Planet aboard an Atlas V rocket. JPL might be building a neat science instrument or a spacecraft that I haven't heard of at the SAF once Mars 2020 is gone, but I'd rather return to see another high-profile interplanetary space probe undergo construction near the city of Pasadena. That robotic probe I have in mind is none other than the Europa Clipper! But we'll see if the Clipper is even built at JPL, and its launch won't be till 2023 (and the rocket that will send it to Jupiter hasn't been selected yet)...so there are still ways to go before assembly officially begins on this Jovian explorer. Happy Friday.
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