All articles tagged with #jpl
NASA's ERNEST rover prototype, built by JPL, completed a 16-mile desert trek in Southern California, mostly autonomously, thanks to new wheels, an active suspension and AI-driven obstacle navigation. The seven-day test aims to inform future lunar and Martian rovers with greater range, speed and terrain flexibility than traditional six-wheel rocker-bogie designs.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1—roughly the size of a small car—still sails outward at about 17 km/s, now well beyond Pluto’s orbit at 166 AU. It communicates at light speed, with signals taking over 23 hours to reach Earth, while its power has dwindled to ~250 watts and only two instruments remain active. The mission has outlived its original four-year plan, outlasting most of its creators, and it carries the Golden Record as a lasting message as it drifts through interstellar space for billions of years.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is field-testing ERNEST, a compact autonomous rover designed to move faster across rugged terrain for future Moon and Mars missions. In a desert trial, ERNEST reached up to 0.6 mph and covered about 16 miles over roughly 37 hours, using mesh-wheeled propulsion, four steerable wheels, and two powered front joints to switch among gaits like squirming, wheel-walking, and obstacle-climbing. Trained with reinforcement learning, the rover can navigate autonomously and even drive sideways, aiming to reach previously inaccessible regions on upcoming missions.
NASA's JPL is field-testing ERNEST, an Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain, to refine mobility and autonomous navigation for future long-range lunar and Mars missions. In March 2026 in the Colorado Desert, the four-wheeled prototype drove about 16 miles (37 hours) with minimal intervention, using active suspension (with a passive mode) and a gimbaled front to handle rugged terrain. The rover is being trained with reinforcement learning in a high-fidelity simulator before autonomous, longer-range lunar testing, aiming to reach speeds far beyond current rovers like Perseverance and Curiosity.
JPL’s Open House is back for October 10–11, 2026 in Pasadena. Admission is free but requires timed tickets, which go on sale August 29 at 9 a.m.; you can reserve up to five tickets and must choose a time slot and list attendees with IDs checked at the door. If tickets sell out, limited group/individual tours are released monthly. Visitors can see mission control, fabrication facilities, the machine shop, and robotics research while learning about Mars rover and space-probe work. Caltech manages JPL, which has faced funding pressures and a 2028 management-contract recompetition.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory invites the public to Explore JPL, a free two-day open house on Oct. 10–11 (9:30 a.m.–4 p.m. PDT) featuring tours of iconic facilities and four themes: Missions That Changed the World, Moon to Mars, In Flight, and Makerspace. Tickets are scarce and distributed online on a first-come, first-served basis for timed slots (up to five tickets per request). Attendees age 18+ must show government ID; a long list of items isn’t allowed and bags are restricted, though parking is free. Highlights include the Space Flight Operations Facility, the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, robotics research, and full-scale models of Perseverance, Voyager, and Galileo.
NASA announced it will solicit bids to operate the Jet Propulsion Laboratory when Caltech's 68-year management contract ends in 2028, marking the biggest leadership shakeup in JPL's history. As a federally funded R&D center, JPL has faced cost pressures amid a booming private space sector, and NASA seeks a cheaper operator—potential bidders include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and universities such as Caltech. The change could preserve JPL's robotic-mission legacy while shifting efficiency and work culture, though funding and missions remain controlled by Congress and NASA HQ.
NASA will competitively bid the management and operation of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Caltech-run lab that has operated under a long-standing arrangement since 1958. The move, tied to NASA’s broader realignment and focus on faster, more cost-conscious delivery, could test whether JPL’s distinctive culture and staff can survive a change in operator—or require NASA to remake parts of its own space enterprise. The contract, currently valued at up to $30 billion and slated to run through Sept. 30, 2028, marks more than routine procurement by examining how much continuity of culture, incentives, and mission focus would endure under new leadership.
NASA will open the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s management to competitive bidding for the first time, meaning Caltech must compete to keep control of the lab it has run since 1958; the 10-year contract is worth up to $30 billion and runs through September 30, 2028, as part of a broader NASA reorganization aimed at boosting efficiency and mission outcomes.
NASA announced it will competitively bid for operating the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a Caltech-run lab for NASA since its early days, as part of a broader agency restructuring to increase center specialization and merge mission directorates. The plan could change how JPL is run and governed, though NASA says there will be no layoffs or program cancellations. A new operator could alter day-to-day management while preserving the lab’s scientific capabilities as the agency pursues ambitious Artemis-era goals.
NASA announced it will compete the contract to manage the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the federally funded R&D center run by Caltech since the 1930s. The current contract runs Oct. 1, 2018–Sept. 30, 2028 with a potential value up to $30 billion; the competition will evaluate whether alternative management approaches can boost mission performance, innovation, and cost efficiency while preserving continuity, the facility’s Southern California location, and ongoing missions. The procurement process has begun to ensure a fair, open competition in line with federal practices.
Ingenuity flew 72 times over nearly three years in Mars’ ultra-thin atmosphere, far surpassing its five-flight design goal before a January 2024 rotor-blade failure grounded it; NASA is using the experience to shape next-generation Mars aircraft, including the six-rotor Mars Chopper, and to explore lighter, commercially available hardware rather than heavy, radiation-hardened systems.
Voyager 1, about 172.6 AU from Earth, continues to transmit from beyond the heliosphere on roughly 22 watts; seven of its ten original instruments are shut down to conserve power, with only the Plasma Wave Subsystem and magnetometer remaining and a small 0.5-watt motor kept spinning to preserve revival chances. The RTGs now deliver around 220 watts total, and NASA plans a long-term 'Big Bang' power-swap strategy—starting with Voyager 2 in mid-2026—to extend telemetry into the 2030s, though one-way signals already take about 23 hours to reach Earth.
NASA's JPL and AeroVironment tested larger rotor blades for the SkyFall Mars helicopters, pushing rotor-tip speeds to Mach 1.08 in a Mars-atmosphere test and delivering about a 30% lift boost, enabling heavier payloads and longer flights for the late-2020s SkyFall mission.
To conserve dwindling power from its plutonium RTG, NASA turned off the Low-energy Charged Particles (LECP) instrument on Voyager 1 after 49 years, a decision that preserves essential systems and could buy roughly one more year of operation in interstellar space; a small portion of LECP will stay active, and engineers plan a broader, lower-energy 'Big Bang' power-saving approach to be tested on Voyager 2 in 2026 and possibly applied to Voyager 1 afterward.