Five students and two teachers had the amazing opportunity to attend a Visitor’s Day Tour at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The Visitor’s Day Tour offers participants a comprehensive overview of JPL’s activities and accomplishments.

The tour included a multimedia presentation called “Journey to the Planets and Beyond”. We also got to visit the von Karman Visitor Center museum where we saw many amazing photographs from space as well as replicas of many of the spacecraft created at JPL over the past decades. We toured the Spacecraft

Assembly Facility, also known as the “clean room”. We got to see the Europa Clipper being assembled! The Clipper is scheduled to launch in October 2024.

Another stop was to the Space Flight Operations Facility, better known as “mission control” or lovingly called “The Center of the Universe” by the engineers that staff it.

Southwestern is so lucky to have this incredible facility practically in our backyard!