# NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory *research-institute . companies* ## Specifications - **country**: United States - **website**: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov - **operator domains**: ["jpl.nasa.gov"] - **founded year**: 1936 - **last verified date**: 2026-05-24 - **verified by**: agency-doc - **claim status**: agency-sourced ## Editorial NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) administered by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) under contract for NASA. Founded on 31 October 1936 on a 168-acre site in La Canada Flintridge, California (commonly referenced with its Pasadena mailing address), JPL operates as NASA's lead center for several families of Earth observation missions and for robotic planetary exploration. JPL's institutional structure distinguishes it from NASA's directly operated field centers. Caltech holds and manages the NASA management contract (currently running through September 2028), and JPL staff are employed by Caltech rather than as federal civil servants. This FFRDC arrangement, confirmed on the NSF Master Government List of FFRDCs as of February 2026, affords JPL a degree of research flexibility not available to direct government units, while keeping it firmly within the NASA mission architecture.[^nsf-ffrdc] In Earth observation, JPL leads or co-leads a diverse mission portfolio spanning soil moisture, greenhouse gas monitoring, thermal sensing, imaging spectroscopy, gravimetry, radar altimetry, and synthetic aperture radar. The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite, launched January 2015, has delivered continuous L-band radiometry of global soil moisture since April 2015.[^smap-jpl] SMAP soil moisture products are archived at the NSIDC DAAC; L-band radar data at the Alaska Satellite Facility DAAC. On the International Space Station, JPL operates ECOSTRESS (land surface temperature, 70 m resolution, approved through FY2026 with potential extension to FY2029)[^ecostress-jpl] and EMIT, a VSWIR imaging spectrometer (380-2500 nm) mapping surface mineral dust composition.[^emit-jpl] JPL manages atmospheric carbon monitoring through the OCO-2 satellite (launched July 2014, continuous operations) and OCO-3 (ISS-mounted, operational since 2019), which adds a Snapshot Area Map mode for targeted emission-source scans and solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence measurement.[^oco3-jpl] Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR), aboard NASA's Terra satellite since 1999, provides nine-angle simultaneous imaging across four spectral bands for aerosol and cloud characterisation.[^misr-jpl] The GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO) pair, launched May 2018 in partnership with Germany's GFZ, continues monitoring groundwater storage, ice mass, and sea-level change via gravity anomaly tracking.[^grace-jpl] The most recent addition is NISAR, a joint NASA-ISRO synthetic aperture radar mission launched 30 July 2025 on an ISRO GSLV Mark II vehicle. JPL leads the NASA contribution, delivering the L-band SAR and mission systems; ISRO contributed the S-band SAR and launch. NISAR entered science operations in January 2026, providing global surface deformation observations every approximately six days.[^nisar-nasa] NASA-side NISAR data flows through the Alaska Satellite Facility DAAC; ISRO distributes through Bhoonidhi. For airborne science, JPL develops and operates the AVIRIS family, the Airborne Visible/InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer lineage comprising the classic AVIRIS (224 channels, 400-2500 nm), AVIRIS-NG, and the current AVIRIS-3, deployed from multiple NASA aircraft platforms for imaging spectroscopy research campaigns globally.[^aviris-jpl] JPL also hosts the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC), a NASA EOSDIS DAAC distributing ocean physics, cryosphere, and surface water datasets from missions including SWOT, the JASON altimetry series, and GRACE-FO. With a workforce of approximately 5,500 (following 2024-2025 reductions) and an annual budget of approximately USD 2.4 billion (FY2022 figure), JPL operates at the intersection of NASA mission execution, fundamental Earth science, and technology development, serving as both an instrument builder, mission lead, and data distribution node for the global EO community. --- Source: https://eo-atlas.org/companies/nasa-jpl Maintainer: SpectraWorks B.V. (CC-BY 4.0)