News Releases

Recent analyses of data fortuitously collected by an APL-built instrument on NASA’s Jupiter-orbiting Juno spacecraft reveal the planet’s little moon Io packs quite a punch, accelerating protons and other charged particles to millions of miles of per hour through an invisible link between itself and Jupiter.

On Feb. 12, 2001, a carefully designed series of maneuvers brought the APL-built NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft to the surface of 433 Eros — the first-ever landing on an asteroid. The trailblazing accomplishment pointed the way for future missions.

Engineers from Johns Hopkins APL, U.S. Navy sailors and industry partners watched years of work pay off when the USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) successfully executed the first live-fire test of the Mark 57 Vertical Launching System with a Standard Missile-2 (SM‑2).

A months-long integration and testing phase culminated recently with a successful review and the start of space-environment testing for NASA’s first planetary defense mission, the Johns Hopkins APL-led Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).

Its proximity to the Sun not only puts NASA’s Parker Solar Probe in position to grab unprecedented information on the nascent solar wind and solar activity, but it also affords the spacecraft some unique (and pretty cool) views of our solar system.

Three principal investigators from APL were among researchers from across the Johns Hopkins enterprise to earn funding in the sixth round of the Johns Hopkins Discovery Awards program.

A team of physicists that includes Johns Hopkins APL’s Leonardo Regoli reveals in a recent study that the Lab-operated MESSENGER spacecraft witnessed a meteoroid impact on the planet Mercury more than seven years ago. It’s the first impact ever observed on the surface of another planet.

Morgan Trexler, a materials engineer at Johns Hopkins APL, was recently named the newest member of the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute executive committee.

The APL-built Parker Solar Probe was wheeling around the Sun last summer when it spied six planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn — in its camera's field of view. The Lab-operated STEREO spacecraft caught a similar glimpse at the same time.

Johns Hopkins APL researchers are working with Johns Hopkins Medicine and a technology startup to explore the use of Bluetooth Low Energy beacons with ultra-wideband capabilities to study the ability of health care workers to maintain safe distances from one another.