Image of the Day: Why you’d really want to tour a NASA Research Center

Why on earth would I want to enter to win a trip to tour a NASA facility? To get up close and personal with NASA technology, of course.

Not sold yet? Then check out the technologies Electronic Products got to play around with while touring the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA.

If you’ve ever wanted to touch a real space rover‘s tire, stand next to a wind tunnel propeller, or hold an actual satellite, then NASA is the place for you.

Highlights from the trip:

This 3D printer is recreating the Mars Curiosity Rover landing site.

NASA’s hyperwall is a 128-panel display hooked up to a supercomputer.

The hyperwall displays multiple high-definitions images across a number of screens. It’s a major component at Ames because it’s used to explain phenomena, ideas, and examples of world change.

This is an original propeller for the wind tunnel.

This winner is holding an actual Phonesat1 satellite made using a smartphone.

The ultimate goal of the PhoneSat mission was to determine whether consumer-grade smartphones could be used as main flight avionics for satellites in space. NASA's PhoneSat satellites, each about the size of a coffee cup, were already equipped with many of the systems needed for a satellite, including GPS receivers, fast processors, versatile operating systems, multiple miniature sensors, and several radios.

Up close with a rover exploratory vehicle.

If you're sad because you missed out on this opportunity, don't be. Instead,  enter to win a trip to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, in October as part of the Littelfuse-sponsored Speed2Design Exploration & Discovery.