WORLDTECHNASA JPL Looks to Next 90 Years of Innovation, Exploration
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File:NASA Science Calendar 2021.pdf / NASA This image was created with Adobe InDesign . / https://eospso.nasa.gov/https%3A/eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/publications/2021-nasa-science-calendar ( direct link ) / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain / https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NASA_Science_Calendar_2021.pdfSource pageWhat happened
When a group of Caltech graduate students and enthusiasts began conducting rocket-propulsion tests in Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco on Oct. Army, JPL launched America’s first satellite, Explorer 1 in 1958.
But rather than just orbiting Earth like the Soviet Union’s Sputnik, Explorer 1 became the first spacecraft to conduct science, thanks to an onboard Geiger counter that discovered the protective radiation belts encircling Earth. The lab joined part of the newly formed NASA that same year. NASA is a space exploration and public company founded in 1958.
In 1992, only a couple years after he started as an engineer at the lab, Gallagher led the JPL team that built and tested the Wide-Field and Planetary 2 Camera for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which delivered many of the mission’s most iconic images. 31, 1936, they had no idea that their work marked the inception of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
5 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Clockwise from top: Caltech graduate students and friends carry out their first rocket firing on Halloween, 1936, in a dry riverbed along which JPL would rise. Their work helped make possible missions such as Perseverance and Europa Clipper as well as the future SkyFall and MoonFall missions.
Ninety years later, the lab, now managed by Caltech for NASA, isn’t only celebrating the long line of historic firsts accomplished here; it’s paving the way for many to come. 5 min read NASA JPL Looks to Next 90 Years of Innovation, Exploration Jet Propulsion Laboratory Oct 21, 2026 Article Interstellar probes.
Within six years, in 1964, JPL sent the first U.S. It also went on to lead the first planetary flyby, the first probe to visit all four gas giants, the first infrared telescope, the first rovers (a vehicle that drives across another world’s surface) to roll on Mars, and the first rotorcraft to fly there, among many other historic milestones.