The wildfires that are currently burning in regions of Southern California are not only visible from space – they threaten the work of scientists in space, too.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena had to be evacuated on January 8 and remained closed until Monday due to the fire that engulfed Eaton. The research center has so far been spared from the flames. Even though it’s an emergency disrupted some of JPL’s data processing and, according to social media posts, greatly impacted the JPL community, the Deep Space Network was able to maintain contact with all of its active spacecraft throughout the evacuation.
JPL “is untouched by the fire thanks to the courageous dedication of our first employees. But our community has been very severely affected with more than 150 JPL members losing their homes and many more displaced,” Laurie Leshin, JPL Director, he wrote in X post on Friday. A JPL Facebook administrator confirmed this grim situation in comment on Sunday. Most staff have been asked to work from home this week and administrators have started auxiliary fund for the Caltech and JPL communities.
UPDATE: @NASAJPL is untouched by the fire thanks to the brave dedication of our first responders. But our community was very severely affected with more than 150 JPL members losing their homes and many others being displaced. Consider offering support here: https://t.co/PGpNj2Z1Zf
— Laurie Leshin (@LaurieofMars) January 10, 2025
JPL is a federally funded robotic space exploration laboratory operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) on behalf of NASA. There are also agencies Deep Space Network (DSN), a network of massive radio antennas used to communicate with space missions. Established in the late 1950s and early 1960s, NASA’s DSN currently maintains contact with the Voyager probes, the Mars rovers and the Juno probe around Jupiter. The Space Flight Operations Center at JPL has been “operational and staffed every day since 1964.” according to at NASA.
According to evacuation notice posted on the lab’s website Wednesday, “JPL facilities, labs, and hardware are secured and protected. Deep Space Network operations, normally conducted at JPL, have been moved off-site to a backup operations center.” As good news, the DSN team maintained contact with their aircraft throughout the evacuation, according to Space.com.
“Our incredible DSN team went above and beyond to ensure that not a single bit of data was lost,” said Nicola Fox, NASA’s associate administrator, during the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week in Maryland, as reported Space.com. “It was a very emotional thing, the first time in 60 years that nobody was actually in the mission control office at JPL, because they had to move to the emergency center.”
Unfortunately, the evacuation of the research center resulted in some interference in data processingincluding some Almost in real time (NRT) data (information available shortly after being recorded by a space instrument), data from Active-passive soil moisture (SMAP) platform, which regularly measures surface soil conditions and data from Microwave limb probe (MLS), which measures atmospheric characteristics twice a day.
While the fact that JPL remained unscathed is a relief to the scientific community, it remains to be seen how the lab will cope with the strengthening dry winds it is predicted to continue until Wednesday.