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| Program Chair: Mark Rogo | June 6, 2013 | ||||||||||||||
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This Week...
June 13
John Morris, Head Deputy
"What's Going on in the DA's Office?"
Upcoming...
June 20
Linda Mehr, Director of the Research Library
"Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science" June 27 Michael & Jordan Wacht, Neutrino, Inc. "The Basic Operations of Computers"
June 29
Demotion Party- The
Beach Club
Santa Monica
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June 13 John Morris, Head Deputy "What's Going on in the DA's Office?" |
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June 20
Linda Mehr, Director of the Research Library
"Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science" |
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Bob Wessling led our pledge and Tom Barron provided our
invocation and an Irish wish =)
We had a visiting Rotarian from BH (and the East Coast!) Renato. Matt Rodman from PACT shared an update from their organization that started in 1991. It's an all-volunteer board and shared what they have bought with our donations. Items such as defibrillators, $ for fire arms training - for best trained officers, printer cartridges, and scholarships to cadets 14-20 years old and asked for continued support. Announcements:
Mark Rogo invited Bill Goodwyn up. Bill has been an invaluable resource for our PE, with his long history with the organization. Unfortunately for Bill, our incoming DG, Doug Baker, handed out buttons at the last District conference informing us we are changing things up and we all received the nuked out saying: "But we've always done it this way!" button. And told Bill and our membership - get used to this! =) La Bruschetta owner, Angelo Peloni presented our Merchant Minutetoday. The restaurants has been in the neighborhood for 29 years. He recognized many of our members as loyal patrons so instead of talking about his restaurant, he mentioned one of his favorite projects was helping with Emerson Jr High and inviting kids in as a reward to eat and discuss their hopes and dreams. He is quite disappointed this relationship has not continued and asked the right group for assistance as PP Ed Jackson stepped up immediately to say he would try to get them re-connected - thanks, Ed! Steve Day our Foundation chair, presented Paul Harris pins to Terry R. White with four sapphires representing a $5K gift to the Foundation and Mark Rogo with a pin containing five sapphires representing a $6K gift - thank you both very much!
Don Fleischman, from the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory was
our esteemed speaker today re: "Modern Science.". He
and our PE, Mark Rogo, actually grew up together so Mark
provided his introduction.
Statement from Charles Elachi, Director of the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (from their website):"Do not go where the path may lead," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail." That could be the motto of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Trailblazing has been the business of JPL since it was established by the California Institute of Technology in the 1930s. America's first satellite, Explorer 1 which launched in 1958, was created at JPL. In the decades that followed, we sent the first robotic craft to the moon and out across the solar system, reconnoitering all of the planets. Pushing the outer edge of exploration, in fact, is the reason JPL exists as a NASA laboratory. In that spirit, this is an exceptionally busy period for JPL in laying new paths. Last August, the Mars Science Laboratory's Curiosity rover made a heart-pounding and technically pitch-perfect landing on Mars, setting the stage for a two-year mission to determine if the planet could have ever hosted life. In June 2012 we launched the X-ray telescope NuSTAR. In September, the Dawn spacecraft, which spent more than a year orbiting the asteroid belt's second largest object, the protoplanet Vesta, used ion propulsion to embark on a flight to orbit the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015. In December 2012, the twin GRAIL spacecraft marked an exciting end to their mission gravity-mapping Earth's moon as they intentionally crash-landed into the lunar surface.
They are among many other missions currently operating
across the solar system. At the Red Planet, Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter is returning exceptionally
detailed photos of the surface, while the Mars
Exploration Rover mission keeps going far beyond
original plans. The flagship explorer Cassini continues
its orbits of Saturn, scrutinizing the ringed planet and
its moons, including the haze-shrouded Titan in an
extended mission. The Voyagers are exploring the edge of
our solar system. A cadre of spaceborne telescopes look
out beyond the planets to stars and galaxies beyond -
among them the Spitzer Space Telescope, Wide-field
Infrared Survey Explorer, Galaxy Evolution Explorer, and
the European-teamed Herschel and Planck missions. Closer
to home, a contingent of Earth-orbiting satellites
monitors the lands, oceans and atmosphere of our own
planet, returning important information on topics
ranging from atmospheric ozone to El Nino events.
In total, JPL has 22 spacecraft and 10 instruments
conducting active missions. All of these are important parts
of NASA's program of exploration of Earth, the solar system
and the universe beyond. These ventures would not be
possible without NASA's Deep Space Network managed by JPL.
This international network of antenna complexes on several
continents serves as the communication gateway between
distant spacecraft and the Earth-based teams that guide
them. While carrying out these exploration missions, JPL
also conducts a number of space technology demonstrations in
support of national security and develops technologies for
uses on Earth in fields from public safety to medicine,
capitalizing on NASA's investment in space technology. The
stories of these mighty things we dare are told in the pages
that begin here.Our speakers' focus was "On to Saturn" as the Cassini space craft was one of his principle projects. He also shared with us about Radio Science and Gravity Waves and gave an example of how it travels 10X the distance from Saturn to the sun and is so sensitive - can hear a snowflake hit ground. Saturn is very cold even colder than liquid nitrogen! The pictures he showed had an almost reverse universe with ice rocks as the solid and dust covering most of the land vs. our water. Gravity waves travel so fast it would only take 10 minutes to NY from Chicago but conversely, if the sun were to disappear, it would take nine minutes before gravity waves let us know. Future project waiting for funding - LISA.
-YYE Aly Shoji
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