Space nerd family fun in LA this weekend: NASA JPL open house

Saturday and Sunday, June 9 and 10, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA opens its doors to the public for an annual Open House.

The event, themed "Great Journeys," will feature a life-size model of Curiosity, the rover currently bound for Mars aboard NASA/JPL’s Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft; demonstrations from numerous other space missions; JPL’s machine shop, where robotic spacecraft parts are built; and the Microdevices Lab, where engineers and scientists use tiny technology to revolutionize space exploration.

JPL Open House includes hands-on activities and opportunities to talk with scientists and engineers. For the first time ever, cell phone users, using text-message capabilities, will be able to take part in a mobile scavenger hunt. “The Voyage” scavenger hunt participants can search for secret capsules hidden across JPL and unlock secret codes.

JPL’s Facebook page is here. If you go and tweet from the event, use the #JPLOpen hashtag. Details are here, and more photos are here. (photo: NASA JPL)

• [Scratcheee]

  The tall kid with the red hat is going to be an astronaut.  I know that look.

  • [pKp]

    Yeah, all the other kids are like “I want to touch it” and he’s like “How does THAT work ?”.

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    those little dudes are going to Mars.

• [strangefriend]

  Let me hijack the thread by mentioning Jack Parsons, one of the founders of the JPL, & also the leader of Aleister Crowley’s occult cult in the USA.

• [John Smith]

  I get so damn tired of the words nerd and geek being used every time the subject is science and technology.