90 years of JPL: Caltech video looks at the lab behind Voyager and the Mars rovers
On 31 October 1936, students in California's Arroyo Seco tested their first rocket engines – the start of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Caltech marks the anniversary with a video.
Photo: NASA / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (cropped and resized)
Video: YouTube · Caltech · youtube.com
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena is turning 90. On 31 October 1936, Caltech graduate students, researchers and rocket enthusiasts began testing rocket propulsion in the Arroyo Seco – regarded as the lab's beginning. It originally worked for the US Army; since NASA was founded in 1958, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has managed JPL for the space agency. For the anniversary, Caltech released a video about the partnership and, on 26 October, a detailed retrospective.
JPL's achievements include Explorer 1, the first US satellite in 1958, whose Geiger counter discovered Earth's radiation belts; Mariner 2, the first flyby of another planet (Venus, 1962); the Voyager probes; Sojourner, the first rover on Mars; and the Ingenuity Mars helicopter. According to Caltech, Voyager 1 is set to be a full light-day from Earth on 18 November 2026. The CMOS camera-on-a-chip used in today's mobile phones was also developed at JPL's Microdevices Laboratory.
Among upcoming projects, Caltech names SunRISE: from 2027, six small satellites are to form a miles-wide radio antenna together to study the Sun. In SkyFall, three helicopters are to be deployed over Mars in 2028 to search for subsurface ice. JPL's first-of-a-kind missions “have transformed our understanding of the universe and our place in it,” says JPL Director Dave Gallagher.