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Inside this compact vacuum chamber, physicists orchestrate a series of precisely timed cooling stages by applying laser beams, dynamic magnetic fields, and chirped radio waves, culminating in a condensed cloud of quantum gas near absolute zero.
Members of the NASA Mars Helicopter team attach a thermal film to the exterior of the flight model of the Mars Helicopter. The image was taken on Feb. 1, 2019.

Work With JPL

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is NASA’s center of excellence for robotics and deep-space exploration. As the agency’s only federally funded research and development center, JPL operates in the public interest with objectivity and independence, strengthening and leveraging private-sector resources to advance America’s space program and key national objectives.

Get in touch about Work With JPL

Location

Southern California

founded

Oct. 31, 1936

Active Missions

40

managed by

Caltech

Areas of Expertise

In a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, engineers observed the first driving test for NASA's Mars 2020 rover on Dec. 17, 2019.

Robotics & Space Exploration

Leading scientific discovery and robotic exploration of Earth, the Moon, Mars, the farthest edges of the solar system, and beyond; building and operating rovers, probes, observatories, and more.

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A gloved hand holds a circular semiconductor wafer printed with rows of multicolored microchip dies in front of an open vacuum chamber glowing purple.

Microdevices & Sensors

Developing a wide variety of flight-worthy microdevices and sensors that enable new science instruments and missions. These technologies make possible unique projects that revolutionize space science and make life better and safer on Earth.

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A United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket launches Aug. 12, 2018.

National Security Space

Collaborating across the space ecosystem with industry, government, and universities to deliver technologies and capabilities that further America’s competitive advantages in all domains.

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This ECOSTRESS image shows plant stress in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica a few months after the onset of a major Central American drought.

Modeling & Simulations

Developing and implementing world-leading, physics-based software that models, simulates, and renders digital twins on Earth, in orbit, and on other planetary bodies, maximizing science return.

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Europa Clipper is seen in the 85-Foot Space Simulator at JPL

Testing & Flight Qualifying

Providing advanced physical testing and flight qualification ranging from component-level analysis to integrated hardware exposure in extreme vacuum, thermal, and terrain environments.

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Fundamental Science Research

Pushing boundaries and probing for answers to the toughest questions — on Earth, in orbit, and out to the farthest reaches of the universe.

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Infrared photograph, the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL’s Table Mountain Facility

Space Computing & Communications

Trusted and time-tested heritage of communications with even the most-distant spacecraft; now lighting the way forward with laser-focused optical communications.

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Patrick Degrosse, engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, shows the guts of the ventilator that a team of NASA engineers designed in just over five weeks. The machine uses none of the parts used in traditional ventilators, so as not to compete for supply lines. Over 300 companies registered on the JPL website to learn more about the ventilator, and more than 100 applied for a license.

Breakthrough Solutions

Engineering bespoke capabilities at the frontiers of physics by generating novel technologies where commercial options do not yet exist.

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FACILITIES

More Best-in-Class Facilities

Spacecraft Assembly Facility

Build and integrate flight spacecraft

Europa Clipper is seen in the 85-Foot Space Simulator at JPL

25-Foot Space Simulator

Simulate deep space to qualify hardware

Shown here is a prototype of the Deep Space Optical Communications, or DSOC, ground receiver detector built by the Microdevices Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Microdevices Laboratory

Fabricate custom detectors, sensors, and lasers

Two small rovers in a sandy yard. The rover in the back has solar panels fitted to it and white wheels. The one in the front has orange wheels and no solar panels.

Rover Operations Center & Mars Yard

Test and operate robots on or over analog and real terrain

Space Flight Operations Facility

Command missions across deep space

hall-thruster

Electric Propulsion Laboratory

Develop and test electric thrusters

APUFFER

Spacecraft Autonomy Testbed

Develop autonomous guidance, navigation, and control systems

An underwater rover called BRUIE is being tested in Antarctica to look for life under the ice.

Ocean Worlds Lab

Analyzing their physics, chemistry, and potential habitability

Specialties

View from inside an ice cave looking up through an opening as a researcher in red gear and the EELS snake robot are lowered on cables against a cloudy sky, surrounded by blue glacial ice walls.

Space-Survivable Robotics

Human-forerunner robots that operate in extreme temperatures, atmospheres, radiation exposure, pressure, unfamiliar terrain, and more.

Illustration of NASA’s Perseverance rover begins its descent through the Martian atmosphere

Entry, Descent, & Landing

Pioneering and refining safe landings onto other worlds for 50 years. From Surveyor missions that ensured Apollo astronauts’ safety, through successive, inventive solutions for landing on Mars, to a lunar return led by MoonFall drones, JPL knows the right way down.

A hand holds a flexible sheet of 3D-printed metal fabric made of interlocking silver octahedral units, draped loosely across the palm against a black background.

Advanced Materials

Exotic materials unavailable elsewhere, including custom carbon-fiber structures, metallic glass alloys, and advanced metals engineered at the atomic scale.

Close-up of a curved 3D-printed metal component showing layered, textured surfaces and a segmented cross-section, with a silvery powdered finish against a blurred neutral background.

Additive Manufacturing

Modeling and printing metals and other spaceflight materials to make small-quantity components and reduce part counts, mass, and iteration time.

Two people stand side by side on a sandy hill, or dune. The person on the left is standing in a blue top, while the person on the right in a gray top is holding a controller. Above and to the left of their heads is a rotorcraft flying above the dune. The background of this image is more sandy dunes.

Autonomous Rover & Drone Operations

Hardware and software that enable spacecraft to autonomously navigate and avoid hazards, mitigating information gaps and space communications delays.

A gloved hand holds a green circuit board labeled NASA JPL Deep Space Optical Communications, featuring a central detector chip surrounded by radiating gold contacts and four edge connectors.

Ultra-Compact, Ultra-Sensitive Detectors & Devices

Infrared, visible, and ultraviolet detectors, submillimeter devices, superconductors, semiconductor lasers, diffractive optics, and more.

BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole

Advanced Optics

From controlling light at the 10 billion to 1 ratio for photons to image exoplanets, to cryogenic large optics operating at 4K, and even segmented optics and phasing to enable the most ambitious space telescopes.

Testing of the Next-Generation Electric Thruster

Next-Generation Propulsion Systems

From high-power electric propulsion thrusters to microthrusters delivering micronewton precision for spacecraft control.

This close-up photograph shows an exquisitely sensitive single Performance-Enhanced Array for Counting Optical Quanta (PEACOQ) detector, which is being developed at JPL to detect single photons – quantum particles of light – at an extremely high rate.

Quantum Instruments & Experimentation

Delivering quantum technologies for precision navigation and timing, sensing, communications, gravity measurement, and fundamental physics.

CGI: JPL engineer verifies electrical grounding of avionics systems on the Coronagraph Instrument.

Mechanical & Control Systems

Designing, developing, and delivering the hardware and software that let missions take flight and accomplish their objectives, working through the entire lifespan from concept through operations.

Passive Microwave Radiometers

Developing first-of-a-kind passive microwave instruments with applications ranging from improving your extended weather forecast here on Earth to probing the depths of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

An illustration of a satellite flying over Earth's surface. The satellite is gold colored, shaped like a capital I, with two blue solar arrays extending horizontally from the middle like wings. Sunlight glints off the right-most panel. The Earth below is a combination of water and dry land, with the areas of water glowing gold, like gilding.

Active Radar Systems

Developing first-of-a-kind radar instruments that enable transformative measurements of Earth and the solar system — from mapping our planet’s oceans and changing terrain to imaging the hidden surfaces of Venus and Titan.