Current Missions

Launch: December 20,1999
This satellite is designed to monitor the total amount of the Sun's energy reaching Earth. These data will help climatologists improve their predictions of climate change and global warming over the next century.

› Overview + Satellite home page

Launch: December 18,1999
This imaging instrument flying on NASA's Terra satellite is designed to obtain high-resolution global, regional and local views of Earth in 14 color bands.

› Overview + Instrument home page

Launch: May 4, 2002
This instrument flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite to make highly accurate measurements of air temperature, humidity, clouds and surface temperatures.

› Overview + Instrument home page

Launch: October 15,1997
A joint endeavor of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, Cassini arrived at Saturn in June 2004 carrying a record number of 12 instruments. The mission is an intensive study of Saturn's rings, its moons and magnetosphere. Cassini released the Huygens probe towards Saturn's largest moon, Titan and the probe successfully landed on the moon's surface in January 2005.

› Overview + Cassini home page

Launch: April 28, 2006
CloudSat is the first satellite that uses an advanced radar to "slice" through clouds to see their vertical structure. Their data will contribute to better predictions of clouds and their role in climate change.

› Overview + CloudSat home page

Launch: September 27, 2007
Dawn, the first spacecraft ever planned to orbit two different bodies after leaving Earth, will orbit Vesta and Ceres, two of the largest asteroids in the solar system.

› Overview + Dawn home page

Launch: January 12, 2005
The Epoxi mission recycles the already "in flight" Deep Impact spacecraft to investigate two distinct celestial targets of opportunity. In 2008, Epoxi observed five nearby stars with "transiting extrasolar planets," and later, on Nov. 4, 2010, the spacecraft will fly by and investigate comet Hartley.

› Overview + Epoxi home page

Launch: April 28, 2003
This mission uses ultraviolet wavelengths to measure the history of star formation 80 percent of the way back to the Big Bang.

› Overview + Galex home page

Launch: March 17, 2002
This joint U.S.-German mission consists of two spacecraft flying in tandem to measure Earth's gravitational field very precisely. This will enable a better understanding of ocean surface currents and ocean heat transport.

› Overview + Grace home page

Launch: December 7, 2001
This oceanography mission is a follow-up to Topex/Poseidon and monitors global ocean circulation, discovers the tie between the oceans and atmosphere, improves global climate predictions, and monitors events such as El Niño.

› Overview + Jason home page

First light: March 2001
The Keck Interferometer links two 10-meter (33-foot) telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The linked telescopes form the world's most powerful optical telescope system. They will be used to search for planets around nearby stars, as part of NASA's quest to find habitable, Earth-like planets.

› Overview + Telescope home page

Kepler

Launch: March 6, 2009
The Kepler Mission will search for Earth-like planets with the "transit" method. A one-meter diameter (39-inch) telescope equipped with the equivalent of 42 high quality digital cameras will continuously monitor the brightness of 100,000 stars, looking for planets that cross the lines-of-sight between Kepler and their parent stars.
›  Mission home page

Launch of Spirit: June 10, 2003
Launch of Opportunity: July 7, 2003
In April 2004, two mobile robots named Spirit and Opportunity successfully completed their primary three-month missions on opposite sides of Mars and went into bonus overtime work.

› Overview + Rover home page

Launch: April 7, 2001
Mars Odyssey is an orbiting spacecraft designed to determine the composition of the martian surface, to detect water and shallow buried ice, and to study the radiation environment.

› Overview + Odyssey home page

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Launch: August 10, 2005
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has the most powerful telescopic camera ever to another planet, plus five other scientific instruments.
+ Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter home page
+ Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter fact sheet

Launch: March 2, 2004
The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft will rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. While Rosetta orbits the comet, JPL's Microwave Instrument onboard the spacecraft will study gases given off by the comet.

› Overview + Rosetta home page

Launch: July 15, 2004
This instrument, which flies aboard NASA's Aura spacecraft, is designed to improve our understanding of ozone, especially how it is depleted by processes of chlorine chemistry.

› Overview + Instrument home page

Moon Mineralogy Mapper

Launch: Oct. 22, 2008
The JPL-managed Moon Mineralogy Mapper is one of two instruments that NASA is contributing to India's first mission to the moon. The instrument is a state-of-the-art high spectral resolution imaging spectrometer that will characterize and map the mineral composition of the moon. The Moon Mineralogy Mapper is aboard Chandrayaan-1.
+ Instrument home page

Launch: December 18, 1999
Carried onboard NASA's Terra satellite, this instrument is a sophisticated imaging system that collects images from nine widely spaced angles as it glides above Earth.

› Overview + Instrument home page

Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason 2

Launch: June 20, 2008
This mission is a follow-on to the Jason-1 mission.
+ Mission homepage

Palomar Observatory

First light: December 1998
A joint effort between JPL and the California Institute of Technology, the Palomar Observatory near San Diego houses a collection of famous telescopes, including the Hale 200-inch and Samuel Oschin 48-inch telescopes. The Palomar Adaptive Optics System, built by JPL and Caltech, corrects for the atmospheric blur of astronomical targets caused by turbulence in Earth's atmosphere. This system's camera was built by Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
+ Palomar Observatory home page

Launch: June 19, 1999
This ocean-observing satellite carries an instrument called a scatterometer, which operates by sending radar pulses to the ocean surface and measuring the "backscattered" or echoed radar pulses bounced back to the satellite. This instrument can acquire hundreds of times more observations of surface wind velocity each day than can ships and buoys.

› Overview + Instrument home page

Space Technology 6

Launch: October 2004
The New Millennium Program's Space Technology 6 Project has validated two advanced, experimental technologies that will free the spacecraft of the future from their need for a continuous link with the ground.
+ Mission home page
+ New Millennium Program

Launch: August 25, 2003
This spaceborne telescope uses infrared technology to study celestial objects that are too cool, too dust-enshrouded or too far away to otherwise be seen. Spitzer, along with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, is part of NASA's Great Observatories Program.

› Overview + Telescope home page

Launch: February 7, 1999
The Stardust-NExT mission recycles the already "in flight" Stardust spacecraft to flyby and investigate comet Tempel 1 in Feb. 2011. The Stardust spacecraft successfully flew through the cloud of dust that surrounds the nucleus of comet Wild-2 and gathered a sample of cometary material. The Stardust return capsule landed in January 2006 carrying the collected particles.

› Overview › Stardust-NExT home page

Launch: July 15, 2004
This instrument, which flies aboard NASA's Aura spacecraft, is an infrared sensor designed to study Earth's troposphere -- the lowest region of our atmosphere -- and look at ozone.

› Overview + Instrument home page

Launch: October 6, 1990
A joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency, Ulysses for the first time sent a spacecraft out of the ecliptic - the plane in which Earth and other planets orbit the Sun - to study the Sun's north and south poles. The prime mission concluded in 1995 but Ulysses continued to monitor the Sun.

› Overview + Ulysses home page

Voyager 1 launch: September 5, 1977
Voyager 2 launch: August 20, 1977
The twin spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2 flew by and observed Jupiter and Saturn, while Voyager 2 went on to visit Uranus and Neptune. Both craft are now heading out of the solar system. In 1998, Voyager 1 became the most distant human-made object in space.

› Overview Project web site

Launches: April 24, 1990; December 2, 1993
These two instruments have served as the main camera capturing pictures on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. When an optical flaw was discovered in Hubble's main mirror, JPL's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 corrected the space telescope's vision and saved the mission.

› Overview