We often encounter kids in our outreach work who can't wait to be astronauts when they grow up. Somehow this didn't have the same pull for me. Instead, I was mesmerized by the robotic spacecraft exploring the distant reaches of the solar system. One facility came up over and over again in watching documentary after documentary on PBS about those probes: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. It was a thrill to visit while I was in graduate school. I still don't think I'm completely recovered from having a badge and a parking pass during the 90-sol prime mission of MSL while I was a postdoc!! Because of that, it's always a joy when one of our own here at PVL gets to experience this place for themselves. First there was Raymond, then Emily and, later on, Brittney. Recently, one of our PhD students, Grace Bischof (pictured above), had the opportunity to spend the winter working projects on-lab. She relates her experience below.
By Grace Bischof
In late 2020, I submitted a scientific proposal to the Technologies for Exo-Planetary Science (TEPS) program, with hopes of becoming a TEPS trainee. Upon a successful application, I was able browse through a list of TEPS collaborators with whom I could carry out a four-month long internship (assuming they accepted my inquiry to work with them). There was quite an appealing list of places to intern with – from national collaborators at Canadian universities and within industry, to international collaborators in institutions as far as Japan. There was one collaborator, however, that immediately jumped out of the page for me: Michael Mischna, who is a researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
I had seen Michael’s name previously through a former PVL member – Brittney Cooper – who carried out an internship at JPL a couple years before I had arrived in the lab, and whose internship project with Michael inspired the bulk of my master’s thesis. Not only that, but as a member of the Mars Science Laboratory team since 2020, JPL was a place of legends to me, as JPL is the section of NASA that manages planetary robotic missions including the Curiosity rover. The idea of working there myself was something of a dream. In the summer of 2021, John reached out to Michael on my behalf to inquire if there was a place for me to carry out my internship with him, and luckily there was! Not only would I have the opportunity of working with Michael, but I would also be working with Leslie Tamppari, who had been project scientist on the Phoenix mission.
After a year’s worth of delays due to the lingering pandemic, in January 2023, I packed two giant suitcases and flew down to Pasadena, California to start my adventure. After hopping off the plane at LAX (haha!), I was immediately greeted to views of the San Gabriel mountains, palm trees, and warm weather. I made my way to the house I was renting with four strangers, which luckily was not an internet scam, and spent the first couple of days unpacking and settling into my new home.
(The first picture I took upon arrival in Pasadena. I couldn’t get over the palm trees.)
Although I had somehow found myself in LA during SoCal’s rainiest winter in a couple decades, nothing could rain on my parade that first day at JPL. Even the 5:30 am wake up call to ensure I was on-time for the first day’s onboarding activities felt exciting. I can clearly remember sitting on the LA city-bus as it approached the JPL gates and feeling awe at the opportunity ahead of me. The first day was spent filling in forms, giving my fingerprints, and taking a photo for my new JPL badge. Afterward, I met with Leslie and Michael to discuss the work I would be completing over the next few months, and then I was given a tour of the 168-acre lab by Michael. At JPL, you often need to have your walking shoes on to get from building to building.
Now, I should probably mention the actual science I did while I was at JPL before returning to the fun stuff. The plan was to work on two projects: the first was polishing some work I did in my master’s, using a radiative transfer model to determine the water-ice opacities at the Phoenix mission landing site. The second was to use the Mars Weather, Research, and Forecasting (MarsWRF) general circulation model to simulate the atmospheres of planets around stars with different stellar type, with future plans to expand this work to investigate the effect this would have on land-ocean distribution.
As science so often goes, the first project encountered many issues. A bug was found in the radiative transfer model which resulted in spending much of my time compiling and re-compiling, running and rerunning the model to determine the source of the issue. The MarsWRF work, however, went much more smoothly. I first spent a couple weeks becoming comfortable using the model. MarsWRF is a giant model, with many moving parts. I was set up with a NASA Supercomputing account so that I could run the model with relative quickness (often, this still took hours to days). Once I had the hang of using the model, I ran some cases simulating the ancient Martian environment to send to a team at Rice University who would use the inputs I provided for a Paleo-Mars lake model. Then, I got to work on the stellar-type investigation. I learned how to make changes to the source code of the model (which could be quite a task – altering several files to ensure that all the correct inputs were feeding into the correct scripts). Once I edited MarsWRF such that the user can define the temperature of the star they wish to simulate around, I ran the model for a Mars-like planet with a thin atmosphere around F-, G-, K-, and M-type stars. From this, we determined that, for the atmosphere that was set up, hotter stars will have more shortwave flux reach the surface of such a planet. This work was the first step in understanding exoplanet atmospheres around different stellar type and will eventually be applied more widely to understand the habitability of exoplanets based on star-type. Working on these projects with Leslie and Michael was such a delight, as they were incredibly supportive during this work.
Not only was the work I was doing at JPL extremely cool, but also the lab itself is one of the most incredible places to work. I was fortunate enough to have an office in the Science building (yes, there was big sign atop the front door reading Science). Although the office was very small and windowless, it got the job done, and I had two great office-mates. There was also ample seating around lab when I was craving a change of scenery. Sometimes I would work in the main cafeteria to be around the buzz of people conversing over their morning coffee, but my favourite place to work was the JPL mall. The mall is a big open area near the front of lab, which had plenty of tables set out to work or eat lunch outside in the fresh air. Working all day on the mall was how I managed to get a sunburn in February – a phenomenon I am not used to during Februarys in Canada.
At JPL, cool things are happening all the time. In the main cleanroom, High Bay 1, they were assembling the Europa Clipper spacecraft when I was there. How amazing it was to look upon the brilliant people putting together a spacecraft that will one day be orbiting the moon of another planet so far out in the solar system. As cool as it is, this was one of the buildings I was only able to access if I brought an American with me. As a foreign national, there were several areas of lab that were off limits without an American escort – they take security very seriously at JPL.
The main cleanroom where the Europa Clipper Spacecraft was being assembled. If you look closely, you can see the workers in their bunny suits. Don’t be fooled by the worker at the front left of the picture – that’s a mannequin known as High Bay Bob, who is often moved around to appear to be carrying out various tasks. Currently, Europa Clipper has been removed from the cleanroom for testing, but a livestream of the cleanroom can typically be found on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKDA6smS9_k
One of the most memorable days for me was when I was able to visit the Mars Yard to watch the Perseverance Rover’s twin, OPTIMISM (Operational Perseverance Twin for Integration of Mechanisms and Instruments Sent to Mars) out into the yard completing some mobility testing. The Mars Yard is a big, sandy yard that is used to mimic the terrain of Mars. Here, OPTIMISM and MAGGIE (Mars Automated Giant Gizmo for Integrated Engineering – also known as Curiosity’s twin), are brought out for a multitude of testing purposes, including mobility and instrument testing, sample collection, or testing new autonomous algorithms. This day, I was also able to go into the garage to see MAGGIE, which was so incredible after working with the Curiosity rover for the past 3 years.
(Top: Outside in the Mars Yard with OPTIMISM as it completes mobility testing. Bottom: Inside the garage with MAGGIE)
Now, why is the blogpost titled, “The Center of the Universe”? Well, within the Space Flight Operations Facility on lab is the Mission Control Center. Here is where the data from the Deep Space Network antennas in Canberra (Australia), Goldstone (California), and Madrid (Spain) are managed. These giant dishes talk to the spacecraft that are currently exploring the solar system (and beyond for the Voyagers), and that communication is all funneled through the mission control room at JPL. This is also the room from which spacecraft, such as the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, were landed on the surface of Mars. The story goes that former-JPL director, Charles Elachi, upon thinking about how all the information from the solar system comes into this room once said, “This must be the center of the universe!" There is now a big plaque in the floor in this room declaring it as the Center of the Universe. The JPL mission control center has someone within it, monitoring data around the clock to ensure there are no issues. In fact, since Southern California is so Earthquake-prone, Space Flight Operation Facility was built to be Earthquake-proof to protect the precious control center inside.
(Top: The Mission Control Center, where you can watch the DSN dishes communicating with spacecraft all over the solar system and beyond. Bottom: There is a superstition at JPL that peanuts must be passed around to ensure that launches and landings are successful, dating back to the 1960s. The lucky peanuts were eaten for Curiosity and Perseverance’s landings, among many others)
From my first day, the other interns who I met were incredibly kind and open. The JPL researchers and staff were all supportive and encouraging. I was lucky to experience only friendly and inviting people. The interns I met came to JPL from all over the world – Singapore, Australia, Italy, and Iceland, to name only a few – and were all open to having the most fulfilling experience at JPL, and in Southern California, as possible. I felt satisfied with not only the work I was doing at JPL, but also felt enriched by the experiences and memories I was making with my fellow colleagues.
Top: A hike up Echo Mountain trail which begins just north of Pasadena. This hike was organized by the Australian interns who had heard there was snow at the top of the hike. By the time we got there, one singular patch of snow about 0.25 square meters in size remained. They still made a few snowballs out of it to throw. Bottom: The view of the sunset from Joshua Tree National. My first time in the desert! We spent two nights camping in Joshua Tree, filling the days with hiking and rock-climbing (which I observed from the ground….).
The month of May came quicker than I could’ve imagined, and soon I was flying back to Toronto to continue my PhD back at York. While it was great to be back seeing my family, friends, and pets, my experience at JPL is one I will cherish forever. I feel incredibly grateful to have spent four months at such an amazing place, working with people who have such a hunger to explore what is out there in the universe. I will take the lessons I learned there with me through the rest of my degree – and hey, maybe in 2.5-years’ time when I’ve graduated with my PhD, JPL will have not seen the last of me (wink, wink, someone hire me!!).
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