Monday, May 16, 2005
A view from the balcony of JPL's Spaceflight Operations Facility. This is the room where JPL controls the spacecraft in flight. The facility can control 36 craft per year and is staffed 24/7. The facility is connected to the Deep Space Network which has large antenna in North America, Australia, and Europe. JPL takes the data from this array and is able to navigate spacecraft on their missions. The DSN is also able to characterize the surfaces of other planets to find landing spots and to detect what objects in space are made of through radiometrics. The dark wallscreen on the far right showed the flight information for the Deep Impact probe, which is on its way to rendezvous with a comet later this year. The screen third from the right showed flight information for all current missions.
Labels: JPL Open House 2005
