COMMUNITY
April 17, 2014
Don Yeomans, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory Fellow, senior research scientist and manager of NASA's Near Earth Objects Program Office, will be the guest speaker on May 12 when the La Cañada Flintridge Coordinating Council holds its annual Les Tupper Awards ceremony in von Karman Auditorium on the JPL campus. The event begins at 7 p.m. and is open to the community. Yeomans' topic is "Near Earth Objects: Finding Them Before They Find Us. " Yeomans was the Radio Science team chief for NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission.
NEWS
By Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com | March 13, 2014
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama released his $3.9 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2015. The plan sets aside $1.28 billion for planetary exploration - an amount one elected official is calling a far cry from what will be required to get JPL missions to Mars and Europa off the ground by 2020. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said in a news release last week the overall outlook of planetary science funding appears better than years past but is still insufficient to meet priorities laid out in NASA's decadal survey.
NEWS
By Sara Cardine,sara.cardine@latimes.com | March 13, 2014
From the outside, room 604 looks like any other classroom on the La Cañada High School campus. But inside, the former wood shop room is a bustling workshop filled with wires, gadgets, computers and all the necessary ingredients required to animate a robot. This is the humble home of the LCHS Engineering Club, which in its seven-year existence, has transformed the lives of students whose interests in building, computers and robotics had previously lain dormant, undiscovered and untapped.
NEWS
By Anita S. Brenner | March 11, 2014
Now that Daylight Saving Time is here, it's time to go back to Min's Kitchen in La Cañada. Our biological clocks need adjusting and the best method is Thai food, which, if well-prepared, is the best cure for jet lag or sleep disruption - at least that's been my experience. At lunch, Min's is full of JPL employees, including many rocket scientists who understand the biomechanics of how home-style Thai food cures all ills. These physicists, engineers and accountants scoot down Foothill Boulevard on the little bus. They dash into Min's, gobble up the lunch specials, pay the bill, hug Toi Vanasin, the owner, and head east on public transport.
NEWS
By Michael Bruer | January 16, 2014
The December appointment of Foothill Municipal Water District Board President Richard Atwater to the National Academy of Sciences Committee (NASC) came at a time when, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor analysis, 85% of California was categorized as experiencing a severe drought. 2014 is shaping up to be no better, exacerbating the issue on the heels of a record year in which many locations across California reported record lows in rainfall. Atwater, a La Cañada Flintridge resident, has been on the Foothill Municipal Water District Board since 1986, and his appointment to the NASC includes a two-year term.
NEWS
By Sara Cardine | January 16, 2014
Rebekah Sosland remembers the first time she saw the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity touch down on the Martian surface 10 years ago . She was 14, in the eighth grade in Fredericksburg, Texas, and watching the momentous event unfold on television as classmates around her chatted and passed notes. "I saw this big bouncing popcorn thing on this red surface, and a voice said we now had two rovers on Mars," Sosland recalls. "I thought, 'Oh my gosh, we have a rover on another planet?
COMMUNITY
January 15, 2014
Ten Years Ago Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, on a four-day campaign swing to the West, paid a visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada. Cheney toured the facility and met scientists and engineers working on the Mars rover program before delivering a short speech to JPL staff. His visit coincided with a television broadcast of then-President George Bush speaking at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., promising the U.S. would return to the moon and that there would be manned missions "to Mars and planets beyond.
NEWS
By Sara Cardine | January 15, 2014
In January 2004, two exploration vehicles touched down on Mars, beginning a 90-day mission in search of potential sources of water, a precursor for life, on a seemingly dead planet. Armed with geological instruments, cameras and the technology required to beam down information to scientists at La Cañada's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Spirit and Opportunity were expected to traverse separate courses of about two-thirds of one mile during their three-month journeys. Now, 10 years later, scientists are still sifting through mountains of data and images collected by Spirit, which traveled 4.8 miles during its six years of mobile operation, and Opportunity, which has logged an amazing 23.6 miles and continues today.
NEWS
By Tiffany Kelly, tiffany.kelly@latimes.com | January 1, 2014
The holidays may be over for most people, but workers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge are planning one last musical hurrah. The JPL Chorus will perform holiday songs at their second free winter concert at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 7 with the Donald Brinegar Singers at Pasadena City College's Westerbeck Recital Hall. The chorus, made up of around 50 scientists, engineers, and other JPL workers, formed in 2012. Many of the members have a background in music and two engineers composed and arranged pieces for the concert.
NEWS
By Anita S. Brenner | December 11, 2013
Last week, Tiffany Kelly reported on community concerns about a proposed five-year-long project to remove debris and mud above Devil's Gate Dam . Kelly reported that neighbors have said that the project “could be environmentally destructive and affect the health of a neighborhood that includes several schools.” The real concern is not the traffic, not the dirt and not some imaginary worry about “the environment.” The elephant in...