Take Your Mother To Work Day

A toast! To my pal, Scott... aka @MarsRoverDriver on Twitter, who took time out of his workday recently to show me around some of the exciting buildings at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California! What an awesome place. In fact, awesome doesn't even begin to cover it.

I even started a new tradition: Take Your Mother To Work Day. Well, now when Mother's Day rolls around, she can't say I never took her anyplace interesting:

Take Your Mother To Work Day

After we left, it struck me as rather ironic that I hadn't actually seen anything to do with Jet Propulsion. The big draw there for me is, of course, the many aspects of Mars Exploration Rovers, or the MER project.

Elon Musk's Martian retirement plans notwithstanding, I am a huge fan of Mars travel, Mars analogs, Mars simulations, Mars landers and orbiters -- well, basically just All Things Mars, robotic or otherwise. Like many of you, I've followed Phoenix, Spirit and Opportunity, and look forward to keeping up with all the happenings of the newest rover, Curiosity -- no matter how fashionably late she may be.

Imagine working in an office where Mars Rovers
just hang around the conference rooms...

As a series for this week, I will be covering all the wonderful things at the "JPL", including spacecraft development, historical design and development such as Galileo and Voyager missions, Scott's amazing job as a Mars Rover Driver, and more about the Curiosity mission, including their new EDL sequence, and the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL).

Along the way I'll be filling my newest album in my Picasa Galleries for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Come along for the ride!