Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, known as JPL, is a federally funded research and development center in La Cañada Flintridge, California. It was founded in 1936 by researchers at the California Institute of Technology and is now owned and sponsored by NASA while being administered and managed by Caltech. Its main work is building and operating planetary robotic spacecraft, though it also runs Earth-orbit and astronomy missions, and it is responsible for operating the NASA Deep Space Network. Active projects have included the Mars 2020 mission with the Perseverance rover, the Mars Science Laboratory mission with the Curiosity rover, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Juno spacecraft at Jupiter and the Psyche asteroid orbiter. JPL also manages the JPL Small-Body Database, and its Space Flight Operations Facility and Twenty-Five-Foot Space Simulator are designated National Historic Landmarks.