Founded by Caltech faculty, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is the leading U.S. center for the robotic exploration of the solar system. With leaders drawn from the Institute’s faculty and more than 200 funded collaborations and joint academic appointments, JPL’s history of world-leading innovation has been profoundly shaped by its role as a division of Caltech.

Working together, researchers and technicians on the Caltech campus and at JPL lead missions in planetary exploration, Earth science, and space-based astronomy. Students and faculty also are involved in space exploration through five NASA facilities at Caltech:

The Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)
The NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI)
The Spitzer Space Telescope
The NASA Herschel Space Observatory
The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR)