Deja Vu

Deja Vu was Originally Posted on July 4, 2005 by lavarock

I’m ready to write a blog and call it “What goes around”, only to find that I called the LAST ONE “What goes around”. Now I have to find some other title. I thought of a good one on my way home tonight, but now I can’t remember it.

Today, NASA placed a hole in a comet 83 million miles from Earth. They did it with precision. They did it with pride.

Sometimes NASA was not able to sucessfully complete a mission, but this time (to use a Southern expression) they did good!

I had a few choices of where I’d be to watch the impact and I opted for Waimea Hawaii (a short drive up Mamalahoa from my house). I attended the open house at the auditorium of the Keck Observatory. The actual observatory is up at the 14,000 foot level of the island, but I wanted to stay relatively comfortable so I went to the open house. There on 3 big screens we watched the JPL feed on on one screen, some telescope view on another screen and the Keck scientists on a third monitor.

Although I kinda knew the answer, I had to ask for the group, “Are most of the observatories on the mountain trained on the event today?” Yes, all of them” was the reply. There are perhaps a dozen telescopes up on Mauna Kea, which Hawaiians consider a sacred place. From that sacred place, scientists are one step closer to discovering how the universe formed. Because there are so many telescops here in one place (above the clouds), the event today was times to occur just after sunset Hawaiian Time. That is why it happened when it did.

Watching “Mission Control” on the big screen brought back memories of my attendance at both the first and third shuttle launches (STS-1, STS-3). Somewhere in the NASA archives, I am seen asking a question of the Mission Control Director. I have photos of Columbia and still have the press handouts of the complete launch transcript.

In a small way, I may have helped with this mission. Years ago I used to work for a company called Microdyne. Microdyne made telemetry equipment which was used by the military, NASA and in later years, the satellite TV industry. Knowing that NASA is somewhat frugal, they may still have those receivers I aligned years ago. They certainly covered the frequency bands still used for tonights telemetry.

On my way home I stopped along the upper road, well out of the way of headlights or house lights and I looked up. There were no clouds and the sky was crisp and clear. I had no idea which way to look and would not have been able to see the comet up there. But I knew where to find it. I would only have to look up at Mauna Kea and see where every telescope was pointed…