Thursday, May 29, 2008

Phoenix Landed




My first month on the job and we had a spectacular landing on Mars. I even had to work. Although I was glad to be to be part of the event and I was shadowing Katherine so I wasn't doing anything critical.It was pretty darn cool. I worked in the Navigation Mission Support Area were the Phoenix navigators were working round the clock for a couple of the events like trajectory corrections and EDL. We watch the lander touch down through our real time doppler feed and everybody cheered when the lander relayed back the successful landing tone. Later on the pictures came in and we went into the main mission support area to check them out Its the room that you can see from NASA TV where everyone is wearing blue shirts. The back row is where all the VIPs sit, including Dr. Elachi, the lab director and some other big wigs from NASA. This is a shot taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of the heat shield, parachute and back shell debris. Pretty awesome.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

1 month old




Brandon Banquet, hope those teeth come in soon so he can have some duck.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Workspace




they definitely make sure there are no obstacles to get in the way of you doing your work around here. Not in photo: the non functioning badge reader (for me at least).

>On 2008-05-12,20:52:12 grandmasophia wrote:

>>hey stinker, i wish i had 2-3 monitors at my work station!


>On 2008-05-17,13:16:31 Blaise wrote:

>>If I had some time, I was going to cut out the actual size photos on the cinema display box and put up two more cardboard cutout monitors. But I had to go home.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

New Job




I'm two weeks into my new job with the Nav section at JPL. This weekend was Open House and me Benedict and Sophia went out to Lab to check out the exhibits. Rovers everywhere.