The group of CNN 'Citizen ireporters' had a unique field trip yesterday after the weekly 'in world' meeting at their 'Future' HQ in Second Life. The group meeting, lead by CNN journalist Nicole, had discussed a story written by excellent ireporter Rocket Flasheart about the Phoenix Lander probe successfully landing on Mars on the 25^th^ May 2008 (see Rocket's fantastic write up at http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-26678).

NASA have a Second Life site on 'Explorer Island' and we all headed off there for the second half of the meeting. We were lucky enough to meet one of the NASA JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) engineers whose avatar name is Helion Enzo. He told us that he helps to maintain Explorer Island.
Helion gave us a guided tour of the sim, which included the replica of the Phoenix landing site. He told us that they had over 87 avatars turn up for the landing coverage as well as real life NASA engineers attending. (87 avatars on one sim would probably be near the limit that a sim could sustain without crashing!).
Helion pointed out a model of Mar's Victoria Crater, which had been created using the real Mars data. We also travelled to the Planetarium, which, Helion explained, is interactive. He told us that if you click on the map outside of the Planetarium, say you pick 'Beijing China' on the map, the grid in the Planetarium will set the sky and you can see what the sky looks like at the present time in Beijing, clever stuff!!
Helion told us that they regularly hold events at the Second Life site, a couple a weeks ago an Information Theory Professor from Harvard gave a talk there. Helion explained that the Professor had talked about how we have to restructure the way of thinking in terms of collaboration, because all the technology tools that we have flattens the entire communication structure.
Quite a few of us in the CNN group decided to join the Second Life Jet Propulsion Laboratory group as this an exciting link with future technology. Helion also said that Shana Dale, who is 2^nd^ in command at NASA is excited about Second Life and she had already given a keynote, a couple of weeks ago, in the virtual world.

I would recommend this site to anyone interested in space exploration, as it is a direct link with the latest events.