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NASA’s Global Climate Change website, managed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, has won the 2011 Webby award for Best Science site. The Webbys, now in their 15th year, is an awards program produced by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences to honor the very best of the Internet each year. See the winning site at http://climate.nasa.gov , and visit www.webbyawards.com for information about viewing a webcast of the awards program.

Get ready to visit other planets, travel outside our solar system and even learn more about what is happening here on Earth. It is time again for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Annual Open House from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., May 2 and 3. Every year the lab is opened to public, allowing a look into what is happening in the area of space and Earth exploration. Kids can have a Mars rover roll over them and see robots that are designed to walk the surface of other planets. Visitors will be able to talk to scientists and engineers that work on mission to Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Earth?

On the morning of Wednesday, March 13, signs were placed on the trail that skirts the east fence of JPL (west of the stream), announcing a temporary closure while a new parking structure is built. The signs indicate that the closure will extend through the summer of 2014 and advises trail users to use “other existing trails” to avoid the construction site. In the 20 years I've used this trail for hiking and biking, JPL has done far more to undermine the trail (literally, by its unchecked storm runoff)

JPL has been awarded the Jack Swigert Award for Space Exploration by the Space Foundation. The award is in memory of Apollo 13 astronaut Swigert and will be presented April 3 in Colorado Springs, Colorado during the Opening Ceremony of the 22nd National Space Symposium. "What we look for is an organization individual that has done the most significant activity in exploration of the solar system," said Elliot Pulham, president and CEO of The Space Foundation. The foundation did not choose one particular mission but decided to honor JPL for all of their missions this year.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory had some Earthly excitement on Tuesday morning when a man refused to yield at the entrance of the first gate and crashed his vehicle into the barricades of the second gate. According to Veronica McGregor at JPL, information on the man who was driving the vehicle is sketchy because they have not received much information from the Altadena Sheriff?s Department, which is handling the case. What is known is that a man who was being pursued by a sheriff?

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is home to some of the most innovative thinkers. This was no exception Friday, when a group of students from Paradise Canyon Elementary School lectured JPL scientists on how to colonize Mars. The team comprises four fifth-graders: Loren Barton, Ankur Jain, Charlie Lea and Anirudh Tammewar, and one third-grader, John Hickman. All of them are members of the science club at Paradise Canyon. The students gave their presentation surrounded by the 1977 Voyager and 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in the von Karman Auditorium.

A hearing is scheduled to be held Sept. 24 for a lawsuit brought by 27 scientists and one engineer from Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center against NASA/JPL who object to a new background check requirement, saying it is an invasion of privacy. “These scientists [and the engineer] work in non-sensitive, unclassified areas,” said attorney Dan Stormer, a partner at Hadsell and Stormer who represents the plaintiffs. A Bush administration directive requires new background checks for all government employees.

La Cañada Flintridge braced for the fallout of what could be 250 layoffs at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, brought on by tighter federal spending. [This corrects an earlier version of this story. Scroll down for details] Layoff notices started going out two weeks ago and will continue through the end of March, said Richard O'Toole, JPL’s legislative affairs manager. The layoffs could leave as many as 200 scientists or engineers and dozens of other workers out of a job. The workers most likely to be affected are those associated with scientific projects that have been delayed due to budget concerns, and those who are part of missions nearing their end and no longer need staffing levels as large as previous years, O’Toole said.

Thousands of science fans convened last weekend at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to learn more about extraterrestrial science and exploration when JPL opened its doors for its annual open house. The purpose of the event is to communicate to the public the importance of the scientific work being done at JPL and to stimulate young minds to the possibilities of continued exploration. This year’s theme, “Excitement in Explorations,” gave scientists and engineers a chance to explain their favorite gadgets, ideas and projects from the past year and to share their plans for the future.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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...