If we're ever going to see astronauts living on Mars like we did in the 2015 film "The Martian," the groundwork for such a mission will come from an unusual facility in Southern California.
Just five miles north of Pasadena, NASA's Jet Propulsion Center (JPL) is where researchers dream up and build spacecraft to explore space from millions of miles away — including wheeled rovers that take photos from the Martian surface:
Tech Insider recently took a tour of JPL, which is about a 15-minute drive from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech for short).
Here's what we saw.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is just 5 miles north of downtown Pasadena, California, close to the San Gabriel Mountains.
It's a massive, 177-acre facility that rivals most college campuses. In fact, it's 17 acres larger than Disneyland.
Source: JustDisney.com
An apt comparison, since this is kind of like the Disneyland of space exploration. Let's head inside.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider