Blog #4

At our recent visit to the NASA Jet propulsion lab we began by taking a look at the clean room. In this room they are currently working on the 2020 Mars rover. This will investigate a region of Mars where there might signs of microbial life. The rover will collect samples of soil and rock to look for these signs of life. We didn’t actually go into the room because of the major cleanliness requirements to enter the room. We met with one of the engineers who told us about the strict policies of the clean room. Some of the world’s most famous spacecrafts have been assembled there. Nothing can come in that might remotely contaminate the space. You can’t even bring in water and seemingly clean people can present a real threat. They have cleaners come in constantly to clean the room. Because of the very time consuming cleaning process you must go through to enter the room, when engineers and scientists enter they spend long periods of time there.
            After visiting the clean room we were given two lectures from scientists who work at the lab. The first lecture was about a new satellite that NASA is launching. It is called the NASA-ISRO SAR and it will radar the earth’s surface to explore issues such as climate change. The second lecture was the most interesting to me, Tom G Farr enlightened us on the subsidence taking place in the Central Valley which is the lowering of the ground surface.This was an interesting revelation of what is going on underneath California’s surface. Beginning in the 1920’s farmers started using groundwater as their major source for water supply. In time, over pumping caused groundwater-level declines. By 1970 there was significant land subsidence. Some areas had subsided by as much as 28 feet! Subsidence causes problems for the infrastructure.
 
It is cracking irrigation canals, buckling roads and depleting storage space in the aquifer that underlines California. Obviously, subsidence is not a good thing and a lot of people don’t know much about it. They are more focused on the drought and lack of rain. Four years of drought and the last two years of extreme heat have put water in very short supply. The main problem stems from the agriculture use. In the San Joaquin Valley the majority of the United States food is grown there. It is the most productive agricultural region in the world. However more crops mean more water is being used in that region.
            Satellites will help us better understand this problem. Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSar) can detect the level of surface change and where it is directly happening. Although we are for now out of the drought it does not mean that there will not be more damage to come.



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