NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter gives us an unprecedented bird’s-eye view of the Red Planet. www.jpl.nasa.gov astronomy2009.nasa.gov NASA’sJet Propulsion Laboratory: “Do not go where the path may lead,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail.” That could be the motto of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Trailblazing has been the business of JPL since it was established by the California Institute of Technology in the 1930s. America’s first satellite, Explorer 1 which launched in 1958, was created at JPL. In the decades that followed, we sent the first robotic craft to the moon and out across the solar system, reconnoitering all of the planets. Pushing the outer edge of exploration, in fact, is the reason JPL exists as a NASA laboratory. In that spirit, this is an exceptionally busy period for JPL in laying new paths. An exciting step in the search for exoplanets took place recently when we launched Kepler, a spaceborne telescope that will seek out Earth-like planets as they pass in front of other stars. JPL is contributing key technology to two European Space Agency spacecraft to be launched together in April, Herschel and Planck. Later this year we will launch another observatory, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. They join our currently operational Spitzer Space Telescope and Galaxy Evolution Explorer astronomical missions. Among our robotic spacecraft arrayed across the solar system, Dawn is using ion propulsion to take …
