Getting ready for something new at Work

Here is a video of the new mars science lab. I will be working on the landing radar for the "sky crane" in the video. The sky crane is the large rocket section that lowers the mars rover to the surface. It starts working about 0:38 seconds into the video. I, along with many other scientists and engineers, will be assembling and testing the radar that determines how far above the surface of Mars the rover is. This will help the crane choose a good location to let the rover down while not crashing into the surface. This is a big move for me because, until I start the Mars rover, all of my career (4 years) has been spent in research and development. I haven't done much with flight programs until now.

Happy Forth of July!

This weekend we repainted our kitchen cabinets.

when we moved in the kitchen was white and the paint was peeling horribly, so Ashley peeled all the white paint off and left the kitchen a discusting salmon color. Heres the pic of the kitchen white

We did not take any pics of the salmon colored kitchen but you can see in the pic where the paint peeled off by the window.



Here is a pic after we painted







Well now that is done... until we demo and put in a better kitchen.

Next will be the lawn.





At least we know somebody is excited about it!

New pics of the pups

Sleeping

Half Asleep

Reading

Playing

Yeah! Ears Up!!

Being a Corgi

JPL on a weekend

So, here we are in May and JPL had its open house this weekend so Ashley could come with me and see what JPL is all about. The lines were long but we did get to see the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and robots that hover in unison at fixed distances from each other for an interferometry project(It is way cooler than I made it sound).
here are some photos.

Here is the clean room where the Mars Lander is being assembled.


In the photo above the pieces behind the yellow and black fence is the body of the MSL Rover. The wheels are located behind the red ropes in the middle left of the picture. In the bottom right is the rocket section that will carry, and land, the rover. That is where the radar will be housed. The RADAR determines the altitude and terrain to let the computer know when it is safe to place the rover on the martian ground. The RADAR stuff is what I do for a living (I have had very little to do with MSL so far though)

The picture below is a close up of the apparatus that will land the rover.The red boxes are thrusters that will help the whole thing hover above the surface of Mars and find a good place to place a very expensive golf cart.









This next picture is a close up of the rover body. As you can see there is not much there. All the rovers guts are currently being tested. Each piece is rigorously tested in many different thermal, radiation, and kinetic (vibration) environments to ensure this little guy works when he gets to mars.





This is a close up of the wheels. Not too impressive because there is nothing near it to relay the size of them.



Here is a mock up of the finished rover set to depart October 2012 or so. You can see from this picture it is pretty large. You will notice that it does not have any solar cells. That's because its science equipment and sheer size necessitated the long lasting efficient power of plutonium.



MSL has a laser on it that burns up rocks and uses a spectrometer to figure out the make up of the surrounding rocks. That's only a few items among its laundry list of scientific equipment.

The hovering robot pictures did not come out very well. The building is pitch black with little lights to represent stars and even with a flash everything looks dark.

So now, what everyone had been waiting for, corgi pictures!!

I'm seeing double. Two corgi's?

Nope your not seeing double. This weekend we recruited a scout for the Corgi Army. He is a boy and his name is Appa. He got his name because of an arrow shaped tuff of white hair behind his head.



Ein was very excited about the new addition. She was very gentle and forgiving even though Appa tried to nurse all day. (ewwww don't worry we didn't take pictures)









Appa got very tired on his first day and pretty much gave up on everything in the end. He is sleeping very well right now.



Ein was pretty happy at the end of the day as you can see in her creepy corgi smile.

Our Home

We moved in to our house. We have been working like crazy to make it our home.Here are some pics of all we have done. Much more is to come but it will take us a while.

Carpets before



Carpet after



Living room before






















Living room after





















Kitchen Cabinet Before



Cabinets after



Entry light Before




Entry light After



These are the projects that have before and afters we'll post again once more is completed.

Trip to Slovang and Santa Barbara

We got away from the stresses of purchasing the house and took a day trip. We went to Slovang and Santa Barbara for Valentines day. Slovang is a Dutch village here in California. It reminds us of Estes Park in many ways...excepts its surrounded by vineyards and its dutch.



The drive to Santa Barbara was beautiful!There are fruit trees and Farmers markets on the way down




then the highway stretched right along the ocean.




We will have to return to Santa Barbara soon to do Wine tasting at the Vineyards, Unfortunately this time we left Slovang too late and the vineyards were closing.

Update on the house: We had the inspection done Wednesday and found out that the copper plumbing that the home was noted to have was an error, and the home actually has galvanized pipes. We sent a request for repair back to the seller and they agreed to fix and change out the plumbing for copper. The work was just done this weekend so we are very happy to report the home will have new plumbing!!

In addition to all this my (Maurio's) vacation time is up :( Time to go back to work tomorrow but its been a good couple of days off with some good beer, my wonderful wife, and pain in the ass animals.

ThEeND