Have you been impressed by Martian valleys with swirling storms above Jupiter, or the icy blades surrounding Saturn? You've traveled with one of JPL's spacecraft or rovers.

The JPL team consists of scientists, engineers, technicians, developers, communicators, designers, safety experts, business executives, and more.

JPL is humanity's most experienced expedition to where humans can't yet go. 

JPL spacecraft have travelled to every planet and the Sun in a search for our role in the cosmos and signs of life beyond Earth.Our goals pay homage to the explorer's never-ending quest: Voyager, Curiosity, Cassini, and Galileo.

It was a JPL camera positioned near the edge of the solar system that looked back at Earth, catching a pale blue dot in the dark.

Explorer I was the first spacecraft, and its success in 1958 ushered in the Space Age and NASA's creation.

JPL study the Earth with investigations to learn about our climate and assist in crisis recovery. With telescopes like Hubble, for which JPL developed clever corrective lenses, we discover distant planets.

JPL Deep Space Network's enormous antennae dishes collect transmissions from nearly all outer-space probes built throughout the world.

JPL's inventions benefit everyone. 

JPL communicate and share data wirelessly because JPL researchers figured out how to send digital messages around the world. Here, scientists developed methods for analyzing signals and pictures that are now widely used.

JPL is a federally-funded research and development facility at Caltech that is managed by NASA.

 JPL is your space program.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure ... than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

It all began in Pasadena, California, in the 1930s, when a group of Caltech graduate students and amateur rocket enthusiasts began experimenting with rocket motors. They moved to the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena, a mostly dry wash on the city's west border, because they couldn't test the motors at Caltech due to fear of fires or explosions. Their rocket tests attracted attention from the US Army before World War 2, which began supporting rocket technology and missile systems development.

After the war, American and Soviet space exploration gained new life. The Space Race began to intensify in October 1957, when the Soviets launched their Sputnik satellite into Earth orbit. In order to catch up, JPL constructed Explorer 1, which launched in January 1958 and became the first American Earth-orbiting satellite. The NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) was established later that year, with JPL becoming part of the agency. Since 1960, JPL has concentrated on space exploration rather than rocket development. However, under Caltech's management, the site in Pasadena remains several kilometers distant. The rest, as they say... is space history.