Why Do We Explore Space?
by Dr Charles Elachi
I applied to a number of universities in the United States... I had no idea what my future was going to be – except that I was passionate about science, and I liked to work on scientific and engineering problems... I was accepted into a number of universities, so I had to decide which one to choose. I looked at a map and I found that Caltech is in Los Angeles, or Pasadena, next to Hollywood – and I thought, “wow, that’s a great place to go!” I thought I would be seeing movie stars every day – at
that time I was very much into movies... So that’s how I decided to go to California, and to go to Caltech. Then I found out after I got to Caltech that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is part of Caltech – it’s part of NASA, but it’s managed by Caltech. I had heard about JPL before, because I was very much interested in space – I remember when Sputnik was launched, and all the activities that were happening in space, and the JPL was the main NASA centre for actually