Jul 31, 2022 11:41 PM
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/10022/...y-peanuts/
Whenever NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is attempting a difficult and risky space maneuver, they always hand out their scientifically proven magic peanuts as part of the countdown procedure.
It dates back to July 28, 1964. The US was in the middle of the Ranger program (I still remember it!) which was trying to crash a highly instrumented spacecraft into the Moon. They had fired six Rangers at the Moon and they had all failed. Tension at JPL was sky-high, since the survival of their program hung by a hair. So one of the engineers handed around peanuts to the Mission Control desks to calm people down. They munched their peanuts at their control panels and Ranger 7 succeeded! Unwilling to mess with something that worked so well, peanuts continued to be handed around and sure enough, Rangers 8 and 9 succeeded too!
Despite that confirmation Cal Tech and NASA are all about science, so the results needed more testing on succeeding projects. On one occasion when there were no peanuts, the mission failed. On another without peanuts, the mission was delayed 40 days and when it finally did launch successfully, peanuts were present. On the Cassini spaceprobe launch October 13, 1997, peanuts were absent and the launch was scrubbed for weather. When Cassini successfully launched two days later, peanuts were doing their thing.
So that's why everyone at NASA JPL Mission Control was eating peanuts when the Perseverance Mars rover performed its totally-crazy science-fiction sky-crane landing. Which worked perfectly, naturally. Peanut power!
Whenever NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is attempting a difficult and risky space maneuver, they always hand out their scientifically proven magic peanuts as part of the countdown procedure.
It dates back to July 28, 1964. The US was in the middle of the Ranger program (I still remember it!) which was trying to crash a highly instrumented spacecraft into the Moon. They had fired six Rangers at the Moon and they had all failed. Tension at JPL was sky-high, since the survival of their program hung by a hair. So one of the engineers handed around peanuts to the Mission Control desks to calm people down. They munched their peanuts at their control panels and Ranger 7 succeeded! Unwilling to mess with something that worked so well, peanuts continued to be handed around and sure enough, Rangers 8 and 9 succeeded too!
Despite that confirmation Cal Tech and NASA are all about science, so the results needed more testing on succeeding projects. On one occasion when there were no peanuts, the mission failed. On another without peanuts, the mission was delayed 40 days and when it finally did launch successfully, peanuts were present. On the Cassini spaceprobe launch October 13, 1997, peanuts were absent and the launch was scrubbed for weather. When Cassini successfully launched two days later, peanuts were doing their thing.
So that's why everyone at NASA JPL Mission Control was eating peanuts when the Perseverance Mars rover performed its totally-crazy science-fiction sky-crane landing. Which worked perfectly, naturally. Peanut power!
![[Image: spurious_correlation2.png?w=600&ssl=1]](https://i0.wp.com/statisticsbyjim.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/spurious_correlation2.png?w=600&ssl=1)