space exploration news & perspectives

Go visit Sarah!

The JPL Open House is a huge annual event. Scientists and engineers will be staffing the information displays, ready to show demos and answer questions about the spacecraft and instruments that they design, build, and operate, and the data that they analyze. Info, including hours and directions as well as links to videos from last year, can be found here.

Now, we know that not everyone can hop over to Pasadena for a weekend.

 There will be an online live video chat at various times both days: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-073

The chats will also be archived, so you can email in a question ahead of time and watch the video later for an answer. You can also follow along on http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23jplopen.

There are pictures from this week’s set-up on various JPL Twitter feeds, including the full-scale model of the next Mars rover, MSL, and ATHLETE, a 6-legged robot which is being developed for the moon. I saw a demo of it last fall, it was really awesome.

I’ll be at the Cassini exhibit, next to the giant inflatable Saturn, on Sunday morning!