Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Annual Report 2011

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Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Annual Report 2011

As years go, some move along at a calibrated simmer, but others erupt at a full boil. The latter is how it was for us in 2011 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It was a year in which we seemed to be always catching our breath. Nowhere was the pace more evident than in our launches of new missions. In one of our busiest seasons ever, we lofted five spacecraft in four launches from Florida and California, dispatching them month after month over the summer. A JPL-teamed international satellite took up station orbiting Earth to measure global sea salinity. A planetary mission headed to Jupiter to probe the giant planets interior. Twin spacecraft flew in tandem to Earth's moon to plumb the history of our companion world. And, over the Thanksgiving weekend, we sent off the laboratory's latest flagship mission, a Mars rover far more sophisticated than any previously sent to the Red Planet. While new robotic expeditions left the gate, the news was no less exciting from our flying missions that achieved historic milestones. One spacecraft that spent five years in dormant cruise mode after its primary mission of collecting comet samples made headlines when it flew by another comet. After years in transit, an ion-powered craft dropped into orbit at one of the solar systems largest asteroids, the protoplanet Vesta, where it is spending a year before continuing on toward the largest asteroid of all, the dwarf planet Ceres. The Kepler mission delivered exciting discoveries of planets around other stars. JPL moved forward with revolutionary technology initiatives in planetary descent systems, optical communications and an advanced atomic clock.