Stories

After years of design and construction, two cross-country trips and thousands of hours of labor, APL has delivered NASA's Europa Clipper propulsion module — the spacecraft's “workhorse" — and its radio frequency module to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for integration with the remainder of the spacecraft.

NASA is investing in the development of a new solar sail concept under the agency’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program, which will provide the project with $2 million over the next two years. Space Exploration Sector engineer Amber Dubill will now take the lead on the project.

Nearly four years after launch, Parker Solar Probe has made significant inroads toward achieving its main science goals — and it continues to break records and capture first-of-its-kind measurements of the Sun.

Yanping Guo of APL has been elected a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) — a prestigious honor bestowed on only 2,008 members in the organization’s history.

After two years of progress in developing a beyond state-of-the-art computer model, the APL-hubbed Center for Geospace Storms will continue expanding for an additional five years, NASA recently announced, citing the center’s significant potential to transform the fields of space weather and space physics.

APL’s Ralph Lorenz is part of an international science team performing the first analysis of acoustics on Mars, releasing a new study that details how fast sound travels through the Red Planet’s extremely thin, mostly carbon-dioxide atmosphere and how Mars might sound to human ears.

As he ties up a decades-long career in the space domain, former APL Space Exploration Sector head Mike Ryschkewitsch has been recognized with the National Space Club and Foundation’s Norman J. Baker Astronautics Engineer Award.

Seven years ago, scientists made the surprising discovery of oxygen coming from comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, throwing into question much of what they thought they knew about the early solar system. But a new study led by Johns Hopkins APL researchers reveals new details that suggest not everything about that discovery is as it seems.

Representatives from a host of federal, state and local agencies convened recently at APL for the fourth iteration of a Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise to assess our nation’s ability to respond effectively to a (simulated) asteroid impact threat to Earth.

APL has been named No. 3 on Fast Company’s 2022 World’s Most Innovative Space Companies list for building and managing NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.