Aerospace Research and Development

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, located in California's Mojave Desert, is one of three complexes in NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN).

One of NASA's leaders in the agency's Space Science Enterprise, JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology. JPL is NASA's Center of Excellence in deep space systems. This center also manages the worldwide Deep Space Network of radio dishes that are placed in California, Spain, and Australia.

JPL engineers are blueprinting missions for the robotic exploration of Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa, distant Pluto, the Sun, and numbers of comets and asteroids. A step-by-step build-up of technological capability has also started, with the aim of detecting and imaging Earth-like planets that circle stars light-years away. JPL also develops and flies instruments and satellites that observe the environment of Earth. Additionally, the laboratory uses its technological expertise for many other customers and partners both within and outside of NASA.

A good example of a recent cutting-edge JPL mission is that of the Deep Space 1. Launched into space in October 1998, Deep Space 1 took a host of advanced technologies around the test track.

Armed with advanced solar arrays, and carrying many other new technologies, including several in communications, microelectronics, and spacecraft structures, Deep Space 1 also validated the first-ever use of an ion propulsion system for primary propulsion in deep space. Fueled by xenon, the ion engine produces a small, but constant thrust for hours on end while being 10 times more fuel efficient than chemical onboard propulsion systems. From late November through the end of the year, the ion engine chalked up nearly 720 hours of engine thrusting and was still going strong. Deep Space 1's validation of its ion engine is viewed by many to be one of NASA's biggest breakthroughs ever.

An artist's rendering of NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat) that measures winds over the ocean surface.

JPL teams continue to improve on such technologies as the Quantum Well Infrared Photodetector, one of the world's most highly sensitive infrared cameras at long wavelengths. Work on the Active Pixel Sensor is being furthered, enabling video cameras to be reduced to the size of a chip coupled with optics, while using only one-hundredth the power of standard CCD cameras.

Sponsored by JPL's Technology Applications Programs (TAP), important milestones are being met in projects pursuing "Global Positioning System on a chip" technology, Millimeter Integrated Circuit low-noise amplifiers, and a submillimeter sensor to measure ice. TAP-developed technologies range from sensors to support far-infrared missions, to electronic components for detection needs in the microwave and submillimeter wave spectral regions. These technologies, and others developed at JPL, will enable such missions as the First Infrared and Submillimeter Space Telescope (FIRST), and contribute to the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission to a comet.

TAP is also developing Lithographie Galvanoformung Abformung (LIGA) grids for NASA's High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI) mission to be launched in 2000. HESSI will provide full Sun spectral images to help discern a number of solar secrets. LIGA/thick film lithography is a technology with an impressive future, making possible specialized arrays for miniature mass spectrometers, miniature ion traps for mass spectroscopy, tunable miniature inductors and capacitors for power and communications applications, as well as micro-sized propulsion, power sources, and pumps. In the case of HESSI, the LIGA microfabrication technique reduced both spacecraft size and the mission's cost.

As part of its current proof-of-concept phase, the Viewing Imager Gimbaled Instrumentation Lab & Analog Neural Three-dimensional processing Experiment (VIGILANTE), has moved to completion phase. VIGILANTE is a machine vision instrument that combines several sensors in order to recognize specific targets in real-time, without the aid of the human eye. The key is a new, JPL-developed, sugar cube-sized processor built on neural networking principles.

JPL's Space Inflatable Technology Program is moving toward center stage. This innovative program is bringing closer the day when huge radar and communication dishes circle the Earth, enormous solar sails slip through the vacuum of space, and giant sunshades cool down high-tech infrared sensors that peer deep into the universe. Accomplishment in this area included the successful testing of a half-scale model of the inflatable sunshield for the Next-Generation Space Telescope (NGST). Also constructed were 42-foot-long inflatable thermoset composite booms for future applications on solar sails. Inflatable solar arrays are now part of the JPL's Deep Space 4 mission to land atop a comet.

Be it ultra-miniature instruments or huge inflatable structures, JPL scientists and engineers have shown technology advancements come in all shapes and sizes.

An artist's rendition of the Mars Polar Lander.