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SWOT: Looking at the Earth’s Water
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The heart of deep space communications at NASA is our Deep Space Network, or DSN, which is managed by JPL. This international array of antennas located at three complexes in California, Spain, and Australia allow us to communicate with our missions in “deep space,” which we at JPL define as from the Moon and beyond. Come celebrate the DSN’s inspiring 60-year legacy and learn how advancements in communications and aerospace engineering will pave the way for the network’s incredible future.
In October 2024, NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will begin its 1.8-billion-mile journey to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. It will investigate if an ocean thought to lie beneath Europa’s icy crust could support life. Join Europa Clipper Mission System Manager Al Cangahula and planetary scientist Kate Craft to learn about the spacecraft’s assembly and preparations for launch, and how Europa Clipper’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.
Two eclipses are crossing over most of the U.S. in the next few months! The first is an Annular Eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023, and the second will be a Total Solar Eclipse on April 8, 2024. An eclipse can be an awe-inspiring celestial event that drastically changes the appearance of the two biggest objects in our sky: the Sun and Moon. It also gives us the opportunity to study our Sun, Earth, and our space environment.
NASA's Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment, or SunRISE, will send a fleet of six toaster sized SmallSats into orbit around Earth to work together as a radio telescope studying the Sun. SunRISE will help scientists better understand space weather events that have the capacity to damage spacecraft or even pose a threat to the safety of astronauts traveling through space.
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, JPL spacecraft engineers worked with medical professionals to develop VITAL (Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible locally), a breathing aid that helps critically ill COVID-19 patients and bolstered scarce stocks of traditional hospital ventilators. Learn from JPL Ventilator (VITAL) Operations Lead, Dr. Stacey Boland, how this VITAL work went from a conversation over morning coffee to a life-saving machine licensed in 42 countries.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) takes incredible images using infrared light. The optics and science instruments must be incredibly cold, especially JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which needs to be at a temperature of less than 7 kelvins, or -447 F. This is not possible without the Cryocooler, which keeps MIRI’s detectors cool.
The InSight Mission to Mars began its journey to the red planet in May 2018. Upon its arrival in November of that year, InSight began an ambitious mission to reveal the internal structure of Mars. The lander detected over 1000 Mars seismic events, studied the Martian weather, and even found magnetic “ghosts” from an old electrical field. The mission ended 4 years after it began, when the solar panels finally succumbed to the dust deposition that prevented them from generating power.
When strong winds on one continent stir up mineral rock dust, those airborne particles can travel thousands of miles and affect entirely different continents. The suspended dust in the air can heat or cool the atmosphere and Earth’s surface. That heating or cooling effect is the focus of NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) mission, which will measure the surface composition of Earth's deserts and arid regions, helping us understand the impacts dust has on the planet's climate. EMIT’s versatile imaging spectrometer can also help map super-emitters of methane – a powerful greenhouse gas – from space, and is already contributing to meaningful climate action.
The Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in February 2021, has the most advanced autonomous driving capability ever flown to Mars. Having such an advanced capability contributes to the rover in its challenging mission to discover signs of life that may have existed on Mars in a distant past. This talk provides an overview on the current research and development efforts on robotics autonomy at JPL, with an emphasis on enhancing the safety, efficiency, and performance of robotic mobility through the applications of risk-aware decision making and machine learning.
The Perseverance Rover has changed the way we look at Mars. We’ll talk with members of the Mars 2020 team about the past two years of operation and discovery.
Join the JPL Education team online and follow along as we build a cardboard rover powered by rubber bands. In this virtual session for grades 4-12 educators and their students, the JPL Education team will answer your students questions while kicking off this standards-aligned engineering activity live!
We’ll talk to one of our robotics engineers about project formulation and demonstration, looking at the process of generating ideas - from napkin sketch to prototype to development and testing.
Nov. 17, 2023 .
NASA's Deep Space Network Turns 60: What's Next?
Oct. 20, 2023 .
Exploring Ocean Worlds: Europa Clipper Is One Year From Launch
Sept. 22, 2023 .
Solar Eclipses: Your Guide to the 2023/2024 Celestial Events
Aug. 25, 2023 .
SunRISE: Studying Space Weather with SmallSats
July 21, 2023 .
More than Rocket Science: JPL’s COVID-19 Ventilator, VITAL
June 23, 2023 .
The Universe of Very Cold: The James Webb Space Telescope, MIRI, and the Cryocooler
May 19, 2023 .
InSight End of Mission: Our Time on Mars
April 21, 2023 .
Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) Mission
March 10, 2023 .
To Boldly Go Where No Robots Have Gone Before: Solar System Exploration with Autonomous Robots at JPL
Feb. 17, 2023 .
Perseverance: Two Years on Mars
