From the Director at JPL
"Do not go where the path may lead," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail." That could be the motto of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Trailblazing has been the business of JPL since it was established by the California Institute of Technology in the 1930s. America's first satellite, Explorer 1 which launched in 1958, was created at JPL. In the decades that followed, we sent the first robotic craft to the moon and out across the solar system, reconnoitering all of the planets. Pushing the outer edge of exploration, in fact, is the reason JPL exists as a NASA laboratory.
In that spirit, this is an exceptionally busy period for JPL in laying new paths. In May we had the highly exciting landing of the Mars Phoenix lander, which will excavate trenches on the arctic plains of the Red Planet in search of water ice. In June we launched the Jason 2 satellite on a joint U.S./French mission to monitor Earth's oceans. In the coming months we will also launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, which will make critical measurements of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that plays a major role in climate change.
Among our robotic spacecraft arrayed across the solar system, Dawn is using ion propulsion to take it into orbit around two bodies for the first time ever -- the large asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is returning exceptionally detailed photos of the Red Planet's surface, while the rovers Spirit and Opportunity keep going far beyond the mission they were originally designed for. The flagship explorer Cassini continues its orbits of Saturn, scrutinizing the ringed planet and its moons, including the haze-shrouded Titan in an extended mission. The Voyagers are exploring the edge of our solar system.
Closer to home, a contingent of Earth-orbiting satellites monitors the lands, oceans and atmosphere of our own planet, returning important information on topics ranging from atmospheric ozone to El Nino events. Still other explorers are looking far beyond the solar system to search for Earth-like planets and understand the history of distant galaxies. These include the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, as well as ground-based projects such as JPL instruments on the Keck Telescope in Hawaii. An exciting step in the search for exoplanets will take place in the next year when we launch Kepler, a spaceborne telescope that will seek out Earth-like planets as they pass in front of other stars.
In total, JPL has 18 spacecraft and eight instruments conducting active missions. All of these are part of NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, designed to explore Earth and space and to send robots and humans to explore the moon, Mars and beyond. These ventures would not be possible without NASA's Deep Space Network managed by JPL. This international network of antenna complexes on several continents serves as the communication gateway between distant spacecraft and the Earth-based teams that guide them. While carrying out these exploration missions, JPL also conducts a number of space technology demonstrations in support of national security and develops technologies for uses on Earth in fields from public safety to medicine, capitalizing on NASA's investment in space technology.
The stories of these mighty things we dare are told in the pages that begin here.
