Mariners , Vikings , Galileo , Cassini , and the Mars rovers Pathfinder , Spirit , Opportunity , and Curiosity were also brought into the world. The High Bay is a Class 10,000 clean room (less than 10,000 particles of 0.5 micron or larger per cubic foot of air), making it a great place to work if you have allergies. Workers in the High Bay have to wear protective clothing (known affectionately as bunny suits) to keep bacteria and other particles (human beings generate millions of skin, hair, dirt, and dust particles every minute) from contaminating the spacecraft.
I’ve spent time in Building 179, mostly up in the visitors’ gallery,but occasionally, luckily, inside the High Bay itself, and to me the place is the closest thing to a modern Gothic cathedral’s inner sanctum that I can imagine. Deep inside the High Bay, almost holy relics of our modern civilization are being carefully tended by illuminati who have gone through years of study and training for the privilege of being in that room. They wear ritualistic garb to ensure maximum purity, follow elaborate, carefully prescribed procedures, and when their novitiate work is done, the Chosen One (the spacecraft) emerges from the cathedral and is lofted to the heavens. In that building, and through those doors, pieces of this planet have been worked into structures and systems that are now parts of other planets. Or, in the case of the Voyagers , which passed through there too, they are now permanent wanderers among the stars. Building 179 is a factory for Earth’s cosmic artifacts, for the things that we cast off this world that will, ultimately, represent us and our time to our progeny, and perhaps even to other beings that we cannot yet begin to imagine. It’s no wonder I gravitate to the place whenever I’m at JPL.
Many other supporting facilities are also needed to design, build, and operate spacecraft and missions like Voyager. For example, a critical supporting facility for Voyager is the Mauna Kea Observatories, built high atop an extinct volcanic peak on the Big Island of Hawaii. Two large telescopes in particular, NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) (with its 120-inch diameter mirror) and the University of Hawaii’s 88-inch diameter telescope (“the 88”), were used extensively to provide advance information about the giant planets and their moons in order to optimize Voyager ’s trajectory and return of scientific data. At nearly 14,000 feet elevation out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, telescopes there are above much ofthe warmth and haze and water vapor of our atmosphere and can thus often obtain crisp images of cloud belts and storm zones on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune or other detailed information on the chemistry and composition of those worlds and their moons and rings.
I did some of my graduate research up there at the IRTF and the 88 and can attest to the harsh conditions of extreme cold, high winds, and low oxygen levels often faced by observers at the summit (often, I would be the only guy on the flight to Hawaii with snow boots and a heavy parka—oh, the strange looks I would get!). Many of the scientists who worked on the Voyager camera team got their start as planetary astronomers, obtaining much of the advance information that they needed to plan the giant planet flybys the only way they could—by telescope.
Voyager imaging team member Rich Terrile got his start as a graduate student at Caltech observing “hot spots” on Jupiter with the giant 200-inch diameter Hale Telescope at Mt. Palomar in Southern California. His follow-on work at the IRTF in Hawaii was interesting and relevant to the Voyager infrared spectrometer team, which wanted to be able to target some of these “windows” into the deeper Jupiter atmosphere during Voyager ’s flybys in 1979. Even though Rich was directly helping out the infrared spectrometer team, secretly he was much more interested in being involved with the imaging team instead.
I’ve spent time in Building 179, mostly up in the visitors’ gallery,but occasionally, luckily, inside the High Bay itself, and to me the place is the closest thing to a modern Gothic cathedral’s inner sanctum that I can imagine. Deep inside the High Bay, almost holy relics of our modern civilization are being carefully tended by illuminati who have gone through years of study and training for the privilege of being in that room. They wear ritualistic garb to ensure maximum purity, follow elaborate, carefully prescribed procedures, and when their novitiate work is done, the Chosen One (the spacecraft) emerges from the cathedral and is lofted to the heavens. In that building, and through those doors, pieces of this planet have been worked into structures and systems that are now parts of other planets. Or, in the case of the Voyagers , which passed through there too, they are now permanent wanderers among the stars. Building 179 is a factory for Earth’s cosmic artifacts, for the things that we cast off this world that will, ultimately, represent us and our time to our progeny, and perhaps even to other beings that we cannot yet begin to imagine. It’s no wonder I gravitate to the place whenever I’m at JPL.
Many other supporting facilities are also needed to design, build, and operate spacecraft and missions like Voyager. For example, a critical supporting facility for Voyager is the Mauna Kea Observatories, built high atop an extinct volcanic peak on the Big Island of Hawaii. Two large telescopes in particular, NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) (with its 120-inch diameter mirror) and the University of Hawaii’s 88-inch diameter telescope (“the 88”), were used extensively to provide advance information about the giant planets and their moons in order to optimize Voyager ’s trajectory and return of scientific data. At nearly 14,000 feet elevation out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, telescopes there are above much ofthe warmth and haze and water vapor of our atmosphere and can thus often obtain crisp images of cloud belts and storm zones on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune or other detailed information on the chemistry and composition of those worlds and their moons and rings.
I did some of my graduate research up there at the IRTF and the 88 and can attest to the harsh conditions of extreme cold, high winds, and low oxygen levels often faced by observers at the summit (often, I would be the only guy on the flight to Hawaii with snow boots and a heavy parka—oh, the strange looks I would get!). Many of the scientists who worked on the Voyager camera team got their start as planetary astronomers, obtaining much of the advance information that they needed to plan the giant planet flybys the only way they could—by telescope.
Voyager imaging team member Rich Terrile got his start as a graduate student at Caltech observing “hot spots” on Jupiter with the giant 200-inch diameter Hale Telescope at Mt. Palomar in Southern California. His follow-on work at the IRTF in Hawaii was interesting and relevant to the Voyager infrared spectrometer team, which wanted to be able to target some of these “windows” into the deeper Jupiter atmosphere during Voyager ’s flybys in 1979. Even though Rich was directly helping out the infrared spectrometer team, secretly he was much more interested in being involved with the imaging team instead.
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