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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Federal research center

Appears in 5 stories

Stories

Perseverance rover breaks record for longest drive on another world

New Capabilities

Operates Perseverance from Pasadena, California

Perseverance set a new off-world driving record on October 11, 2026. Its odometer read 45.22 kilometers on Mars, passing the 45.16-kilometer mark Opportunity needed nearly 15 years to reach.

Updated 2 hours ago

Doomsday Glacier melting faster than projected, doubling sea level estimate

New Capabilities

Co-developer of the ice-sheet model and operator of polar monitoring satellites

Warm seawater pushes several kilometers inland beneath Thwaites Glacier, and a model that accounts for it doubles the glacier's projected contribution to sea level by 2100, to about 30mm. The study was published Oct. 12 in Nature Communications.

Updated Oct 22

Perseverance finds three water systems that shaped Mars' Jezero Crater

New Capabilities

Built and operates the Perseverance rover

NASA's Perseverance rover has found that Mars' Jezero Crater hosted three separate water systems: carbon-dioxide-rich groundwater, a standing lake, and later hot underground fluids. Each altered the same rocks in different ways, at different times.

Updated Oct 2

Curiosity rover finds new class of organic molecules on Mars

New Capabilities

Operates the Curiosity rover mission

For 14 years, the Curiosity rover has looked for organic molecules on Mars by heating samples in a tiny onboard oven. The method works, but it destroys fragile compounds before they can be identified. On April 22, 2026, NASA reported that a different technique—squirting a chemical solvent onto a Martian rock sample before heating it—revealed more than 20 organic molecules the rover had never seen before.

Updated May 31

Satellite reveals tsunamis don't behave as scientists thought

New Capabilities

Leading U.S. operations for SWOT mission

NASA's SWOT satellite caught a magnitude 8.8 Kamchatka earthquake's tsunami in unprecedented detail on July 30, 2025. The waves scattered, interacted, and dispersed across the Pacific, contradicting the 50-year assumption that they travel as one coherent swell.

Updated May 19