Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
Halloween Crack for Halloween
-
Similar Topics
-
By NASA
3 min read
JPL Engineers Put Their Skills to the Test With Halloween Pumpkins
A display at the annual pumpkin-carving contest at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory turns a white-painted squash into one of the large antennas of the agency’s Deep Space Network, which enables spacecraft at the Moon and beyond to communicate with Earth.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Using spray paint, power tools, and elaborate props, JPL engineers turn the pumpkins into elaborate displays that can pay tribute to – and poke fun at – popular culture and space exploration. Above, a pumpkin creation that spoofs the film “Oppenheimer.”Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Mechanical engineers at JPL compete in the annual pumpkin-carving contest on Oct. 31, which also marks JPL’s 87th birthday. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Pumpkin carving reaches new heights during the annual competition, where spacecraft-building engineers mix ingenuity and creativity for some spectacular results.
When mechanical engineers accustomed to building one-of-a-kind spacecraft turn that focus to pumpkins, the results can be hauntingly good. The annual Halloween pumpkin-carving contest at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California may be all in good fun, but to the 200 or so participants, it’s also serious business. Power tools are involved.
Pumpkins can even be turned into musical instruments during JPL’s annual pumpkin-carving contest.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Dioramas can incorporate flying-saucer gourds, guitar-strumming pumpkins, and squashes that bear a striking resemblance to celebrities or famous deep space missions. Participants carve them on their breaks – 60 minutes of frantic sawing and drilling that sends vegetable detritus flying on a patio at JPL. (This year, one team had a minute-by-minute spreadsheet to make sure they stayed on schedule.)
Carving complete, engineers race into two conference rooms in a nearby building to install the pumpkins into displays of up to 4 feet by 4 feet square. Non-pumpkin materials – motorized parts, lights, often elaborate props, and painted backdrops – can be prepared beforehand.
“It’s not really a pumpkin-carving contest in the traditional sense. It’s a pumpkin art installation event with very few rules,” said Peter Waydo, who manages JPL’s spacecraft mechanical engineering section and emcees the carving. He’s been participating since the event began in 2011. “This is something everybody looks forward to every year – it just lets their creative juices flow completely unrestricted from the rules and processes we’re normally bound by.”
For the 2023 event, more than two dozen teams produced displays. They ranged from a Barbenheimer-themed “atomic makeover” featuring a mirrored disco-ball pumpkin to a space octopus emerging from a Jupiter-colored pumpkin to greet NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, and there were references to Taylor Swift, “Dune,” and the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope. All of the creations were on display for fellow engineers, scientists, technicians, and other JPL employees to admire.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a competition without winners. A panel of judges named the year’s top six, with three from each of the two sections of engineers that participate. A display re-creating favorite items from JPL’s museum and an interactive Indiana Jones-themed display both won first. Second went to the Deep Squash Network – a spoof on NASA’s Deep Space Network, which enables spacecraft to communicate with Earth – and to a creation involving a descendent of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on the fictional planet Arrakis. The two third-place winners were an eyeball-pumpkin that resembled Las Vegas’ Sphere and the Barbenheimer display.
The event comes on a special day for the lab, which, founded Oct. 31, 1936, was celebrating its 87th birthday.
Additional photos from the pumpkin competition are available on JPL’s website.
Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.
News Media Contact
Melissa Pamer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-314-4928
melissa.pamer@jpl.nasa.gov
Share
Details
Last Updated Oct 31, 2023 Related Terms
Jet Propulsion Laboratory Explore More
4 min read Data From NASA’s WISE Used to Preview Lucy Mission’s Asteroid Dinkinesh
Article 1 day ago 3 min read See SWOT Mission’s Unprecedented View of Global Sea Levels
Article 1 day ago 5 min read NASA Is Locating Ice on Mars With This New Map
Article 5 days ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
By NASA
Although no ghouls or goblins or trick-or-treaters come knocking at the International Space Station’s front hatch, crew members aboard the orbiting facility still like to get in the Halloween spirit. Whether individually or as an entire crew, they dress up in sometimes spooky, sometimes scary, but always creative costumes, often designed from materials available aboard the space station. Please enjoy the following scenes from Halloweens past even as we anticipate the costumes of the future.
Left: Wearing a black cape, Expedition 16 NASA astronaut Clayton C. Anderson channels his inner vampire for Halloween 2007. Image credit: courtesy Clayton C. Anderson. Middle: For Halloween 2009, the Expedition 21 crew shows off its costumes. Right: Expedition 21 Flight Engineer NASA astronaut Nicole P. Stott shows off her Halloween costume.
Left: Italian Space Agency astronaut Luca S. Parmitano finally gets his wish to fly like Superman during Expedition 37. Right: Who’s that behind the scary mask? None other than NASA astronaut Scott J. Kelly celebrating Halloween in 2015 during his one-year mission.
Left: Expedition 53 Commander NASA astronaut Randolph J. “Randy” Bresnik showing off his costume. Middle: Expedition 53 Flight Engineer NASA astronaut Joseph M. Acaba wearing Halloween colors. Right: Expedition 53 European Space Agency astronaut Paolo A. Nespoli showing off his Spiderman skills.
Left: Expedition 57 crewmembers in their Halloween best – European Space Agency astronaut and Commander Alexander Gerst, left, and NASA astronaut Serena M. Auñón-Chancellor. Right: Members of Expedition 61, NASA astronaut Christina H. Koch, top left, European Space Agency astronaut Luca S. Parmitano, NASA astronaut Andrew R. “Drew” Morgan, and NASA astronaut Jessica U. Meir, show off their Halloween spirit in 2019.
Left: Expedition 66 crewmembers NASA astronaut R. Shane Kimbrough, left, Thomas G. Pesquet of the European Space Agency, Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and NASA astronaut Mark T. Vande Hei showing off their Halloween cards. Right: A hand rising from the grave?
In October 2021, Crew-3 NASA astronauts Raja J. Chari, Thomas H. Marshburn, Kayla S. Barron, and Matthias J. Maurer of the European Space Agency (ESA), had some undisclosed plans for when they reached the space station just before Halloween. However, bad weather at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida thwarted those super-secret spooky Halloween plans, delaying their launch until Nov. 11. Undeterred, Expedition 66 crewmembers who awaited them aboard the station held their own Halloween shenanigans. ESA astronaut Thomas G. Pesquet posted on social media that “Strange things were happening on ISS for Halloween. Aki rising from the dead (or is it from our observation window?),” referring to fellow crew member Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Left: In 2022, Expedition 68 astronauts Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, left, and NASA astronauts Francisco “Frank” C. Rubio, Nicole A. Mann, and Josh A. Cassada dressed as popular video game and cartoon characters, using stowage containers in their Halloween costumes and holding improvised trick-or-treat bags. Right: Expedition 70 astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA, left, Satoshi Furakawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, and European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen celebrate Halloween 2023.
The spookiness continues…
Explore More
8 min read 25 Years Ago: STS-95, John Glenn Returns to Space
Article 1 day ago 5 min read 25 Years Ago: Launch of Deep Space 1 Technology Demonstration Spacecraft
Article 1 week ago 7 min read 30 Years Ago: The STS-58 Spacelab Life Sciences-2 Mission
Article 2 weeks ago View the full article
-
By NASA
On Sept. 7, 2023, during its 54th close flyby of Jupiter, NASA’s Juno mission captured this view of an area in the giant planet’s far northern regions called Jet N7. The image shows turbulent clouds and storms along Jupiter’s terminator, the dividing line between the day and night sides of the planet. The low angle of sunlight highlights the complex topography of features in this region, which scientists have studied to better understand the processes playing out in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
As often occurs in views from Juno, Jupiter’s clouds in this picture lend themselves to pareidolia, the effect that causes observers to perceive faces or other patterns in largely random patterns.
Citizen scientist Vladimir Tarasov made this image using raw data from the JunoCam instrument. At the time the raw image was taken, the Juno spacecraft was about 4,800 miles (about 7,700 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 69 degrees north.
JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing. More information about NASA citizen science can be found at https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscience.
More information about Juno is at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.swri.edu. For more about this finding and other science results, see https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/science-findings.
Image credit:
Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Image processing by Vladimir Tarasov © CC BY
View the full article
-
By NASA
The image shows turbulent clouds and storms along Jupiter’s terminator, the dividing line between the day and night sides of the planet. On Sept. 7, 2023, during its 54th close flyby of Jupiter, NASA’s Juno mission captured this view of an area in the giant planet’s far northern regions called Jet N7. The image shows turbulent clouds and storms along Jupiter’s terminator, the dividing line between the day and night sides of the planet. The low angle of sunlight highlights the complex topography of features in this region, which scientists have studied to better understand the processes playing out in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
As often occurs in views from Juno, Jupiter’s clouds in this picture lend themselves to pareidolia, the effect that causes observers to perceive faces or other patterns in largely random patterns.
Citizen scientist Vladimir Tarasov made this image using raw data from the JunoCam instrument. At the time the raw image was taken, the Juno spacecraft was about 4,800 miles (about 7,700 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 69 degrees north.
JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing. More information about NASA citizen science can be found at https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscience.
More information about Juno is at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.swri.edu. For more about this finding and other science results, see https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/science-findings.
Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Image processing by Vladimir Tarasov © CC BY
View the full article
-
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.