OUR SPACE: Explore JPL – the center of the universe

Published 8:00 am Tuesday, June 13, 2017

On the annual trip to home base at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., Yours Truly was honored and delighted to work at the Deep Space Network (DSN) Mission Control during the Explore JPL Open House event. And as a special treat I got to work with the Space Flight Operations Facilities (SFOF) manager Jim McClure (a native of Georgia!). Jim is a seemingly bottomless well of information concerning what may arguably be one of the most famous rooms in all of NASA: the Dark Room.

People stood in line happily for sometimes over an hour to catch a glimpse of this high tech haven of awesomeness, with the dimly lit rows of monitors and the giant displays of which spacecraft is downloading data to which antenna at the moment. Any spacecraft farther from Earth than the moon sends its data through DSN; at the moment that’s almost two dozen, so you can imagine what an organizational nightmare this can be. There are three DSN locations: one at Goldstone in the Mojave desert, one near Madrid, Spain, and one near Canberra, Australia. All three complexes route their data through SFOF — whether they originate from a NASA spacecraft or from a mission from another origin, such as Europe or India.

Jim proudly refers to the SFOF as The Center of the Universe because of its special status as the hub of all deep space communication, and there is actually a plaque inset in the floor in the Dark Room proclaiming this to be true. And it’s really hard, nay, impossible to prove that it isn’t!

Any time a spacecraft has landed on another planet and functioned as intended, it was controlled from this very spot. Now named after the former director of JPL Dr. Charles Elachi it continues to make history every single day.

The SFOF was the place from where the first lunar landing was guided in May 1966. But wait, you may say, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin didn’t make bootprints on the moon until 1969! True, but that was the first time people landed on the Moon. The first soft landing was made by an unscrewed vehicle called Surveyor 1, and so that honor goes to the SFOF.

The visitors were introduced to the marvels of the facility by people dividing them into groups of around 75, and then they got to watch a brief video with JPL director Michael Watkins. And then Jim shared his considerable knowledge of the history and accomplishments of the DSN with the audience. Finally we opened the doors and the crowd entered the inner sanctum — the Dark Room where all was revealed to them. There was another brief video inside and people were encouraged to “take pictures of everything and post them everywhere.”

At some point systems engineer Bobak Ferdowsi — better known as “Mohawk Guy” (google that one!) — stopped by, the young man who revolutionized the stuffy image of an engineer overnight while working on the landing team of the Curiosity Rover. While he currently doesn’t sport a mohawk ‘do, he is as hip as ever!

I had a memorable encounter with a young visitor who was patiently waiting his turn to step through the doors into the Dark Room, when he asked me: “Is it all virtual reality in there?”

“Nope,” I said. “It’s much better: it’s REAL reality in there.”

His jaw fell in stunned amazement. “Duuuuude, that’s so awesome…”

And off he went to see the highlight of his visit to JPL.

Learn all about the Deep Space Network at https://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/

Beate Czogalla is the Professor of Theater Design in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Georgia College & State University. She has had a lifelong interest in space exploration and has been a Solar System Ambassador for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/ NASA for many years. She can be reached at  our_space2@yahoo.com.