Projects and Missions

Achieving networked, collaborative offensive weapons systems that will learn from their environment and autonomously work together to defeat integrated air and missile defenses.

APL has a significant evaluation role in the Air Force program to replace the aging Minuteman III system.

APL’s leadership in electronic disease surveillance, both at home and abroad, is making a difference on the front lines of protecting the health of a population.

In the decades since NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft explored the solar system’s ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, APL has made concerted efforts to underscore the scientific value of these planets and provide innovative conceptual missions to return to their azure skies. Through research, workshops, and seminars, APL researchers and engineers are helping establish a framework and community that will maximize the scientific returns of a potential future mission.

NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission, which APL is building in partnership with Principal Investigator David McComas of Princeton University, will explore our solar neighborhood, called the heliosphere — decoding the messages in particles from the Sun and beyond our cosmic shield.

APL conceptualized, prototyped, and published a framework enabling the integration and automation of diverse cybersecurity solutions to dramatically increase the speed and scale of cyber defense.

We are solving critical challenges for the Navy’s undersea surveillance community, making contributions such as active and passive sonar processing algorithms for inclusion in the Advanced Surveillance Build tactical sonar modernization program.

Enabling intelligent systems that continuously adapt to changing conditions and missions in the real world.

APL holds a key leadership role in NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative (LSII), which aims to spur the development and deployment of technologies enabling humans to live and work on the Moon.

Lunar Vertex will be the first mission to carry out a comprehensive study of lunar magnetic anomaly and the associated swirl and mini-magnetosphere.

APL leads several test and evaluation efforts for the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity’s Machine Intelligence from Cortical Networks (MICrONs) project, launched to develop state-of-the-art machine-learning capabilities by modeling how the brain processes information.

MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) was the first mission to orbit Mercury, shedding unprecedented light on the origins and evolution of the innermost planet.

Special Operations Forces (SOF) continue to rely on APL expertise to understand the communications technology landscape, inform requirements development, and identify options for mobile communications capabilities across a variety of operational scenarios.

Working with technical consultants and the Navy fighter aircraft community, we created a pilot-behavior model for air-to-air combat.

APL is proud to conceptualize and implement highly classified and critically important spaceflight missions to enable our nation’s security.