Beth, Diane and Victor, members of The LAUNCH Team, visited the Jet Propulsion Laboratory last week (January) as part of a recon for the next LAUNCH forum. That's right – looks like LAUNCH is headed west this time to Pasadena, California. It was a great trip and JPL looks like a perfect venue to host our forum.
The JPL Von Karmen auditorium is close to the JPL gate and visitor center and also has a wonderful museum next door. There are mock ups of the Mars Rovers as well as many other science mission exhibits. There's a TV studio behind the auditorium so we hope to be able to use that for our Innovator video shoots. We also got to see the Mars Yard as well as many of the labs where the JPL scientists work. All of these will be great for a quick tour during the forum.
And as always we scouted out great venues for our evening events. We'll keep those as a surprise, but we promise our forum attendees will certainly enjoy the beauty and history of Pasadena.
Planning is full steam ahead for our next LAUNCH forum – to be held in July 2012. The topic will be announced very soon!
By Diane Powell