Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, usually called JPL, is a federally funded research and development center in La Cañada Flintridge, California, in the United States. Researchers of the California Institute of Technology founded it in 1936, and it is now owned and sponsored by NASA while Caltech administers and manages it. Its main work is the construction and operation of robotic planetary spacecraft, though it also runs Earth-orbit and astronomy missions, and it operates the NASA Deep Space Network. Its history begins with the GALCIT rocket experiments in the Arroyo Seco; it was transferred from the Army to the newly formed NASA in December 1958, and its engineers designed and operated the Ranger and Surveyor missions to the Moon and the Mariner missions to Venus, Mars and Mercury.