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79-579: The Alpha Monocerotids is a meteor shower active from 15 to 25 November, with its peak occurring on 21 or 22 November. The speed of its meteors is 65 km/s, which is close to the maximum possible speed for meteors of about 73 km/s (see Specific energy#Astrodynamics ). Normally it has a low Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR), but occasionally it produces much more intense meteor storms that last less than an hour: such outbursts were observed in 1925, 1935, 1985, and 1995. The 1925 and 1935 storms both reached levels passing 1,000 ZHR. Peter Jenniskens predicted

158-567: A Jupiter-C rocket. They carried out three successful sub-orbital flights in 1956 and 1957. Using a spare Juno I (a modified Jupiter-C with a fourth stage), the two organizations then launched the United States' first satellite, Explorer 1 , on January 31, 1958. This significant achievement marked a new era for JPL and the US in the space race. Less than a year later in December 1958, JPL

237-409: A close flyby of Saturn 's moon Titan . The spacecraft sent back detailed images and data from both gas giants, revolutionizing our understanding of these distant worlds. The Voyager 2 spacecraft followed a more extensive trajectory, conducting flybys of not just Jupiter and Saturn, but also Uranus and Neptune. These encounters provided firsthand data from all four gas giants, offering insights into

316-514: A comet swings by the Sun in its orbit , some of its ice vaporizes, and a certain number of meteoroids will be shed. The meteoroids spread out along the entire trajectory of the comet to form a meteoroid stream, also known as a "dust trail" (as opposed to a comet's "gas tail" caused by the tiny particles that are quickly blown away by solar radiation pressure). Recently, Peter Jenniskens has argued that most of our short-period meteor showers are not from

395-492: A compromise between the maximum number of meteors available for viewing and the brightening sky, which makes them harder to see. Meteor showers are named after the nearest constellation, or bright star with a Greek or Roman letter assigned that is close to the radiant position at the peak of the shower, whereby the grammatical declension of the Latin possessive form is replaced by "id" or "ids." Hence, meteors radiating from near

474-507: A disaster or terrorist attack. FINDER uses microwave radar to detect breathing and pulses. Additionally, JPL is home to the JPL-RPIF (Jet Propulsion Laboratory – Regional Planetary Image Facility) which is chartered as a repository for all robotic spacecraft hard-copy data and thus provides a valuable resource to NASA funded science investigators, and an important conduit for the distribution of NASA generated materials to local educators in

553-592: A kilometer or more in diameter that cross Earth's orbit by 2013. Entering the 2010s and 2020s, JPL continued its Mars exploration with the Curiosity rover and the Mars 2020 mission, which included the Perseverance rover and the retired Ingenuity helicopter . Perseverance's core objective was to collect samples for a future Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. In addition, JPL ventured into asteroid exploration with

632-509: A meteor storm, peaking at rates of thousands of meteors per hour. Leonid storms gave birth to the term meteor shower when it was first realised that, during the November 1833 storm, the meteors radiated from near the star Gamma Leonis. The last Leonid storms were in 1999, 2001 (two), and 2002 (two). Before that, there were storms in 1767, 1799, 1833, 1866, 1867, and 1966. When the Leonid shower

711-491: A part of any shower. These random meteors will not appear to come from the radiant of the leading shower. In most years, the most visible meteor shower is the Perseids , which peak on 12 August of each year at over one meteor per minute. NASA has a tool to calculate how many meteors per hour are visible from one's observing location. The Leonid meteor shower peaks around 17 November of each year. The Leonid shower produces

790-589: A resident office at the facility staffed by federal managers who oversee JPL's activities and work for NASA. There are also some Caltech graduate students , college student interns and co-op students. The JPL Education Office serves educators and students by providing them with activities, resources, materials and opportunities tied to NASA missions and science. The mission of its programs is to introduce and further students' interest in pursuing STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers. JPL offers research, internship and fellowship opportunities in

869-466: A single vanishing point on the horizon. Meteor showers are normally named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. This "fixed point" slowly moves across the sky during the night due to the Earth turning on its axis, the same reason the stars appear to slowly march across the sky. The radiant also moves slightly from night to night against the background stars (radiant drift) due to

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948-513: A smaller part of JPL's overall budget, they are integral to fulfilling the diverse set of objectives that these federal agencies oversee. In fiscal year 2022, the laboratory's budget was approximately $ 2.4 billion, with the largest share going to Planetary Science development. In 2024, due to budget misappropriation in Mars Sample Return (MSR), the lab slashed approximately 1000 workers and contractors in preparation to make wave for

1027-461: A year on a Saturday and Sunday in May or June, when the public was invited to tour the facilities and see live demonstrations of JPL science and technology. More limited private tours are also available throughout the year if scheduled well in advance. Thousands of schoolchildren from Southern California and elsewhere visit the lab every year. Due to federal spending cuts mandated by budget sequestration ,

1106-524: Is given annually to an individual or organization that has made significant contributions to public awareness of space programs, in 1998; and with the John L. "Jack" Swigert, Jr., Award for Space Exploration on three occasions – in 2009 (as part of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Team ), 2006 and 2005. When it was founded, JPL's site was immediately west of a rocky flood-plain – the Arroyo Seco riverbed – above

1185-841: Is not storming , it is less active than the Perseids. See the Infographics on Meteor Shower Calendar-2021 on the right. Official names are given in the International Astronomical Union's list of meteor showers. Any other Solar System body with a reasonably transparent atmosphere can also have meteor showers. As the Moon is in the neighborhood of Earth it can experience the same showers, but will have its own phenomena due to its lack of an atmosphere per se , such as vastly increasing its sodium tail . NASA now maintains an ongoing database of observed impacts on

1264-564: Is now owned and sponsored by NASA and administered and managed by the California Institute of Technology . The primary function of the laboratory is the construction and operation of planetary robotic spacecraft , though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN). Among the major active projects at the laboratory, some are

1343-448: Is simple celestial mechanics  – the material drifts only a little laterally away from the comet while drifting ahead or behind the comet because some particles make a wider orbit than others. These dust trails are sometimes observed in comet images taken at mid infrared wavelengths (heat radiation), where dust particles from the previous return to the Sun are spread along the orbit of the comet (see figures). The gravitational pull of

1422-450: Is subject to annual fluctuations based on both the federal allocation to NASA and the life cycle of ongoing projects. High-profile missions may receive significant long-term funding commitments, whereas smaller or shorter-term projects may have more modest financial support. These agencies often commission projects that leverage JPL's unique expertise in areas like remote sensing , robotics, and systems engineering. Although these projects form

1501-576: The Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) when the first set of United States rocket experiments were carried out in the Arroyo Seco . This initial venture involved Caltech graduate students Frank Malina , Qian Xuesen , Weld Arnold and Apollo M. O. Smith , along with Jack Parsons and Edward S. Forman , often referred to as the "Suicide Squad" due to

1580-545: The Los Angeles Superior Court took opening statements on the case in which former JPL employee David Coppedge brought suit against the lab due to workplace discrimination and wrongful termination. In the suit, Coppedge alleges that he first lost his "team lead" status on JPL's Cassini-Huygens mission in 2009 and then was fired in 2011 because of his evangelical Christian beliefs and specifically his belief in intelligent design . Conversely, JPL, through

1659-1290: The Mars 2020 mission, which includes the Perseverance rover; the Mars Science Laboratory mission, including the Curiosity rover; the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter ; the Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter ; the SMAP satellite for Earth surface soil moisture monitoring; the NuSTAR X-ray telescope ; and the Psyche asteroid orbiter. It is also responsible for managing the JPL Small-Body Database , and provides physical data and lists of publications for all known small Solar System bodies . JPL's Space Flight Operations Facility and Twenty-Five-Foot Space Simulator are designated National Historic Landmarks . JPL traces its beginnings to 1936 in

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1738-620: The Moon that paved the way for the Apollo program . JPL proved itself a leader in interplanetary exploration with the Mariner missions to Venus , Mars , and Mercury , returning valuable data about our neighboring planets. Additionally, JPL was early to employ female mathematicians. In the 1940s and 1950s, using mechanical calculators, women in an all-female computations group performed trajectory calculations. In 1961, JPL hired Dana Ulery as

1817-543: The OSIRIS-REx mission which returned a sample from asteroid Bennu . As JPL moves forward, its focus remains on diverse interplanetary and even interstellar missions. Future Mars missions will aim to return the samples collected by the Perseverance rover back to Earth. Additionally, JPL's Europa Clipper mission launched in 2024 to study Jupiter's moon Europa , believed to harbor a subsurface ocean. Building on

1896-497: The Sun . The "ice" may be water , methane , ammonia , or other volatiles , alone or in combination. The "rock" may vary in size from a dust mote to a small boulder. Dust mote sized solids are orders of magnitude more common than those the size of sand grains, which, in turn, are similarly more common than those the size of pebbles, and so on. When the ice warms and sublimates, the vapor can drag along dust, sand, and pebbles. Each time

1975-519: The United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). Occasionally, JPL engages in joint missions or research endeavors with international space agencies or research institutions. While these partnerships contribute a relatively small portion of JPL's overall budget, they serve to enhance the scope and impact of its scientific research and technological development. The total budget for JPL

2054-764: The White Sands Proving Ground , Edwards Air Force Base , and Goldstone, California . In 1954, JPL teamed up with Wernher von Braun 's engineers at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency 's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama , to propose orbiting a satellite during the International Geophysical Year . The team lost that proposal to Project Vanguard , and instead embarked on a classified project to demonstrate ablative re-entry technology using

2133-494: The 1995 return based on the hypothesis that these outbursts were caused by the dust trail of a long period comet occasionally wandering in Earth's path due to planetary perturbations. During observations in southern Spain, assisted by a team of observers of the Dutch Meteor Society , Jenniskens confirmed that the meteoroids were moving in a long-period comet orbit. The outburst of 1995 allowed researchers to determine

2212-504: The Department of Commerce, claiming their constitutional rights were being violated by the new, overly invasive background investigations. 97% of JPL employees were classified at the low-risk level and would be subjected to the same clearance procedures as those obtaining moderate/high risk clearance. Under HSPD 12 and FIPS 201, investigators have the right to obtain any information on employees, which includes questioning acquaintances on

2291-569: The Devil's Gate dam in the northwestern panhandle of the city of Pasadena in Southern California , near Los Angeles . While the first few buildings were constructed in land bought from the city of Pasadena, subsequent buildings were constructed in neighboring unincorporated land that later became part of La Cañada Flintridge . Nowadays, most of the 168 acres (68 ha) of the U.S. federal government -owned NASA property that makes up

2370-406: The Earth and Tempel-Tuttle and marks where Earth encountered dense dust. This showed that the meteoroids are mostly behind and outside the path of the comet, but paths of the Earth through the cloud of particles resulting in powerful storms were very near paths of nearly no activity. In 1985, E. D. Kondrat'eva and E. A. Reznikov of Kazan State University first correctly identified the years when dust

2449-402: The Earth moving in its orbit around the Sun. See IMO Meteor Shower Calendar 2017 ( International Meteor Organization ) for maps of drifting "fixed points." When the moving radiant is at the highest point, it will reach the observer's sky that night. The Sun will be just clearing the eastern horizon. For this reason, the best viewing time for a meteor shower is generally slightly before dawn —

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2528-465: The Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli ascertained the relation between meteors and comets in his work "Notes upon the astronomical theory of the falling stars" ( 1867 ). In the 1890s, Irish astronomer George Johnstone Stoney (1826–1911) and British astronomer Arthur Matthew Weld Downing (1850–1917) were the first to attempt to calculate the position of the dust at Earth's orbit. They studied

2607-596: The JPL campus is located in La Cañada Flintridge. Despite this, JPL still uses a Pasadena address (4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109) as its official mailing address. There has been occasional rivalry between the two cities over the issue of which one should be mentioned in the media as the home of the laboratory. After the 2024 layoffs, there are only approximately 5,500 full-time Caltech employees and contractors working on any given day. NASA also has

2686-532: The Los Angeles/southern California area. The predominant source of JPL's financial support is NASA. As a field center of NASA, JPL's primary activities and projects are generally aligned with NASA's mission objectives in space exploration, Earth sciences, and astrophysics. The funding allocated to JPL comes as a portion of NASA's annual budget, which is itself part of the United States federal budget approved by Congress. The scale of

2765-509: The NASA Museum Alliance in 2003 out of a desire to provide museums, planetariums, visitor centers and other kinds of informal educators with exhibit materials, professional development and information related to the then-upcoming landings of the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity . The Alliance now has more than 500 members, who get access to NASA displays, models, educational workshops and networking opportunities through

2844-600: The Ninth Circuit found the process violated the employees' privacy rights and issued a preliminary injunction. NASA appealed and the US Supreme Court granted certiorari on March 8, 2010. On January 19, 2011, the Supreme Court overturned the Ninth Circuit decision, ruling that the background checks did not violate any constitutional privacy right that the employees may have had. On March 12, 2012,

2923-455: The Sun), others are decelerated (making shorter orbits), resulting in gaps in the dust trail in the next return (like opening a curtain, with grains piling up at the beginning and end of the gap). Also, Jupiter's perturbation can dramatically change sections of the dust trail, especially for a short period comets, when the grains approach the giant planet at their furthest point along the orbit around

3002-578: The Sun, moving most slowly. As a result, the trail has a clumping , a braiding or a tangling of crescents , of each release of material. The third effect is that of radiation pressure which will push less massive particles into orbits further from the Sun ;– while more massive objects (responsible for bolides or fireballs ) will tend to be affected less by radiation pressure. This makes some dust trail encounters rich in bright meteors, others rich in faint meteors. Over time, these effects disperse

3081-610: The Voyager program's success, JPL continues to push the boundaries of deep-space exploration. The Interstellar Probe concept, though not yet formalized, proposes to send a spacecraft ten times the distance from the Sun as Pluto, to explore the interstellar medium and the outermost reaches of our solar system. JPL has been recognized four times by the Space Foundation : with the Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award, which

3160-623: The absence of meteor storms that season confirmed the calculations, the advance of much better computing tools was needed to arrive at reliable predictions. In 1981, Donald K. Yeomans of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory reviewed the history of meteor showers for the Leonids and the history of the dynamic orbit of Comet Tempel-Tuttle. A graph from it was adapted and re-published in Sky and Telescope . It showed relative positions of

3239-481: The budget is contingent on the projects that JPL undertakes as missions can range from flagship interplanetary missions costing billions of U.S. dollars to smaller Earth observation systems with budgets in the hundreds of millions. Aside from NASA, JPL secures funding for specialized projects from other federal agencies, including but not limited to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

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3318-413: The comet's orbit to form a dense meteoroid stream, which subsequently evolves into Earth's path. Shortly after Whipple predicted that dust particles traveled at low speeds relative to the comet, Milos Plavec was the first to offer the idea of a dust trail , when he calculated how meteoroids, once freed from the comet, would drift mostly in front of or behind the comet after completing one orbit. The effect

3397-566: The dangerous nature of their experiments. Together, they tested a small, alcohol-fueled motor to gather data for Malina's graduate thesis. Malina's thesis advisor was engineer/aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán , who eventually secured U.S. Army financial support for this "GALCIT Rocket Project" in 1939. In the early years of the project, work was primarily focused on the development of rocket technology. In 1941, Malina, Parsons, Forman, Martin Summerfield , and pilot Homer Bushey demonstrated

3476-522: The diversity of organizations you represent." The NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center, which is moving from its location at the Indian Hill Mall in Pomona, California, at the end of 2013, offers resources, materials and free workshops for formal and informal educators covering science, technology, engineering and science topics related to NASA missions and science. The lab had an open house once

3555-580: The dust ejected in 1866 by comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle before the anticipated Leonid shower return of 1898 and 1899. Meteor storms were expected, but the final calculations showed that most of the dust would be far inside Earth's orbit. The same results were independently arrived at by Adolf Berberich of the Königliches Astronomisches Rechen Institut (Royal Astronomical Computation Institute) in Berlin, Germany. Although

3634-463: The dust trails can evolve in complicated ways. For example, the orbits of some repeating comets, and meteoroids leaving them, are in resonant orbits with Jupiter or one of the other large planets – so many revolutions of one will equal another number of the other. This creates a shower component called a filament. A second effect is a close encounter with a planet. When the meteoroids pass by Earth, some are accelerated (making wider orbits around

3713-472: The exact radiant of the swarm and the solar longitude of its peak as well as to confirm the brevity of Alpha Monocerotid outbursts as less than one hour. The parent body, probably a long-period comet , is unknown. In 2019, Jenniskens and Esko Lyytinen predicted an outburst starting around 04:50 UTC on November 22, 2019 (11:50 p.m. EST November 21). The meteor outburst was predicted to last for roughly 15 minutes, to reach 400 meteors per hour, similar to

3792-598: The first female engineer to work alongside male engineers as part of the Ranger and Mariner mission tracking teams. Building on the momentum from the successes of the 1960s and early 1970s, JPL initiated an era of deep space exploration in the late 1970s and 1980s. The highlight of this period was the launch of the twin Voyager spacecraft in 1977. Initially set on a trajectory to explore Jupiter and its moon Io, Voyager 1 's mission parameters were adjusted to also provide

3871-535: The first jet-assisted takeoff ( JATO ) rockets to the Army. In 1943, von Kármán, Malina, Parsons, and Forman established the Aerojet Corporation to manufacture JATO rockets. The project took on the name Jet Propulsion Laboratory in November 1943, formally becoming an Army facility operated under contract by the university. In the same year, Qian and two of his colleagues drafted the first document to use

3950-550: The first successful Mars rover, Sojourner , demonstrating the feasibility of mobile exploration on the Martian surface. In 2004, the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity , landed on Mars. Opportunity outlived its expected lifespan by 14 years, providing a wealth of scientific data and setting the stage for future Mars missions. In the 2000s and 2010s, JPL broadened its exploration scope, including

4029-584: The laboratory developed two significant deployed weapon systems, the MGM-5 Corporal and MGM-29 Sergeant intermediate-range ballistic missiles, marking the first US ballistic missiles developed at JPL. It also developed several other weapons system prototypes, such as the Loki anti-aircraft missile system, and the forerunner of the Aerobee sounding rocket. At various times, it carried out rocket testing at

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4108-610: The launch of missions to study the outer planets, like the Juno mission to Jupiter and the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. Concurrently, JPL also began to focus on Earth science missions, developing satellite technology to study climate change, weather patterns, and natural phenomena on Earth. JPL also opened the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA in 1998, which had found 95% of asteroids

4187-429: The meteoroids and create a broader stream. The meteors we see from these streams are part of annual showers , because Earth encounters those streams every year at much the same rate. When the meteoroids collide with other meteoroids in the zodiacal cloud , they lose their stream association and become part of the "sporadic meteors" background. Long since dispersed from any stream or trail, they form isolated meteors, not

4266-466: The meteoroids due to increased distance from the sun should marginally decrease meteor brightness. This is somewhat balanced because the slower descent means that Martian meteors have more time to ablate. On March 7, 2004, the panoramic camera on Mars Exploration Rover Spirit recorded a streak which is now believed to have been caused by a meteor from a Martian meteor shower associated with comet 114P/Wiseman-Skiff . A strong display from this shower

4345-519: The moon maintained by the Marshall Space Flight Center whether from a shower or not. Many planets and moons have impact craters dating back large spans of time. But new craters, perhaps even related to meteor showers are possible. Mars, and thus its moons, is known to have meteor showers. These have not been observed on other planets as yet but may be presumed to exist. For Mars in particular, although these are different from

4424-539: The name Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In a NASA conference on the history of early rocketry, Malina wrote that the work of the JPL was "considered to include" the research carried out by the GALCIT Rocket Research Group from 1936 on. In 1944, Parsons was expelled due to his "unorthodox and unsafe working methods" following one of several FBI investigations into his involvement with the occult, drugs and sexual promiscuity. During JPL's Army years,

4503-542: The nature and dynamics of the outer planets. Both Voyager spacecraft, after fulfilling their primary mission objectives, were directed towards interstellar space , carrying with them the Golden Records – phonograph discs containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life on Earth. The 1980s also saw the inception of the Galileo mission which launched in the late 1980s. The Galileo spacecraft

4582-565: The nearby motion picture and television industries, by advising them about scientific accuracy in their productions. Science fiction shows advised by JPL include Babylon 5 and its sequel series, Crusade . JPL also works with the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS-S&T). JPL and DHS-S&T developed a search and rescue tool for first responders called FINDER. First responders can use FINDER to locate people still alive who are buried in rubble after

4661-531: The next 50 years. Jérémie Vaubaillon continues to update predictions based on observations each year for the Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Éphémérides (IMCCE). Because meteor shower particles are all traveling in parallel paths and at the same velocity, they will appear to an observer below to radiate away from a single point in the sky. This radiant point is caused by the effect of perspective , similar to parallel railroad tracks converging at

4740-432: The next fiscal year 2025. There is a tradition at JPL to eat "good luck peanuts " before critical mission events, such as orbital insertions or landings. As the story goes, after the Ranger program had experienced failure after failure during the 1960s, the first successful Ranger mission to impact the Moon occurred after a JPL staff member had decided to pass out peanuts to relieve tension. The staff jokingly decided that

4819-492: The normal water vapor drag of active comets, but the product of infrequent disintegrations, when large chunks break off a mostly dormant comet. Examples are the Quadrantids and Geminids , which originated from a breakup of asteroid-looking objects, (196256) 2003 EH 1 and 3200 Phaethon , respectively, about 500 and 1000 years ago. The fragments tend to fall apart quickly into dust, sand, and pebbles and spread out along

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4898-539: The objects in the Solar System with an atmosphere: Mercury, Venus, Saturn's moon Titan , Neptune's moon Triton , and Pluto . Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory ( JPL ) is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in La Cañada Flintridge, California , Crescenta Valley, United States. Founded in 1936 by Caltech researchers, the laboratory

4977-401: The ones seen on Earth because of the different orbits of Mars and Earth relative to the orbits of comets. The Martian atmosphere has less than one percent of the density of Earth's at ground level, at their upper edges, where meteoroids strike; the two are more similar. Because of the similar air pressure at altitudes for meteors, the effects are much the same. Only the relatively slower motion of

5056-535: The open house has been previously cancelled. JPL open house for 2014 was October 11 and 12 and 2015 was October 10 and 11. Starting from 2016, JPL replaced the annual Open House with "Ticket to Explore JPL", which features the same exhibits but requires tickets and advance reservation. Roboticist and Mars rover driver Vandi Verma frequently acts as science communicator at open house type events to encourage children (and particularly girls) into STEM careers. In addition to its government work, JPL has also assisted

5135-445: The peanuts must have been a good luck charm, and the tradition persisted. These are some of the missions partially sponsored by JPL: The JPL Advanced Projects Design Team, also known as Team X, is an interdisciplinary team of engineers that utilizes "concurrent engineering methodologies to complete rapid design, analysis and evaluation of mission concept designs". On February 25, 2005, Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12

5214-436: The planets determines where the dust trail would pass by Earth orbit, much like a gardener directing a hose to water a distant plant. Most years, those trails would miss the Earth altogether, but in some years, the Earth is showered by meteors. This effect was first demonstrated from observations of the 1995 alpha Monocerotids , and from earlier not widely known identifications of past Earth storms. Over more extended periods,

5293-736: The program. Staff at educational organizations that meet the Museum Alliance requirements can register to participate online. The Museum Alliance is a subset of the JPL Education Office's Informal Education group, which also serves after-school and summer programs, parents and other kinds of informal educators. On December 9, 2020 , the Museum Alliance officially announced a rebrand to the Museum & Informal Education (MIE) Alliance. In an announcement to members, they said, "Pronounced 'My' Alliance, our new name better reflects

5372-578: The rate of the 1995 outburst. However, in the event, though the peak occurred at 05:00 UTC, the rate was much lower than predicted. Meteor shower A meteor shower in August 1583 was recorded in the Timbuktu manuscripts . In the modern era, the first great meteor storm was the Leonids of November 1833. One estimate is a peak rate of over one hundred thousand meteors an hour, but another, done as

5451-557: The shower was of short duration and was not seen in Europe , and that the meteors radiated from a point in the constellation of Leo . He speculated the meteors had originated from a cloud of particles in space. Work continued, yet coming to understand the annual nature of showers though the occurrences of storms perplexed researchers. The actual nature of meteors was still debated during the 19th century. Meteors were conceived as an atmospheric phenomenon by many scientists ( Alexander von Humboldt , Adolphe Quetelet , Julius Schmidt ) until

5530-579: The star Delta Aquarii (declension "-i") are called the Delta Aquariids . The International Astronomical Union's Task Group on Meteor Shower Nomenclature and the IAU's Meteor Data Center keep track of meteor shower nomenclature and which showers are established. A meteor shower results from an interaction between a planet, such as Earth, and streams of debris from a comet . Comets can produce debris by water vapor drag, as demonstrated by Fred Whipple in 1951, and by breakup. Whipple envisioned comets as "dirty snowballs," made up of rock embedded in ice, orbiting

5609-439: The status of the employee's mental, emotional, and financial stability. Additionally, if employees depart JPL before the end of the two-year validity of the background check, no investigation ability is terminated; former employees can still be legally monitored. Employees were told that if they did not sign an unlimited waiver of privacy, they would be deemed to have "voluntarily resigned". The United States Court of Appeals for

5688-704: The storm abated, estimated more than two hundred thousand meteors during the 9 hours of the storm, over the entire region of North America east of the Rocky Mountains . American Denison Olmsted (1791–1859) explained the event most accurately. After spending the last weeks of 1833 collecting information, he presented his findings in January 1834 to the American Journal of Science and Arts , published in January–April 1834, and January 1836. He noted

5767-525: The summer and throughout the year to high school through postdoctoral and faculty students. (In most cases, students must be U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents to apply, although foreign nationals studying at U.S. universities are eligible for limited programs.) Interns are sponsored through NASA programs, university partnerships and JPL mentors for research opportunities at the laboratory in areas including technology, robotics, planetary science, aerospace engineering, and astrophysics. In August 2013, JPL

5846-458: Was approved by the Secretary of Commerce . This was followed by Federal Information Processing Standards 201 ( FIPS 201 ), which specified how the federal government should implement personal identity verification. These specifications led to a need for rebadging to meet the updated requirements. On August 30, 2007, a group of JPL employees filed suit in federal court against NASA, Caltech, and

5925-486: Was designed to study Jupiter and its major moons in detail. Although the probe only entered the gas giant's orbit in the 1990s, its inception and planning during the 1980s signified JPL's continued commitment to deep space exploration. The 1990s and 2000s saw a resurgence in Mars exploration, driven by JPL's Mars Pathfinder and Mars Exploration Rover missions. In 1997, the Mars Pathfinder mission deployed

6004-606: Was expected on December 20, 2007. Other showers speculated about are a "Lambda Geminid" shower associated with the Eta Aquariids of Earth ( i.e. , both associated with Comet 1P/Halley ), a "Beta Canis Major" shower associated with Comet 13P/Olbers , and "Draconids" from 5335 Damocles . Isolated massive impacts have been observed at Jupiter: The 1994 Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 which formed a brief trail as well, and successive events since then (see List of Jupiter events .) Meteors or meteor showers have been discussed for most of

6083-656: Was named one of "The 10 Most Awesome College Labs of 2013" by Popular Science, which noted that about 100 students who intern at the laboratory are considered for permanent jobs at JPL after they graduate. The JPL Education Office also hosts the Planetary Science Summer School (PSSS), an annual week-long workshop for graduate and postdoctoral students. The program involves a one-week team design exercise developing an early mission concept study, working with JPL's Advanced Projects Design Team ("Team X") and other concurrent engineering teams. JPL created

6162-463: Was released which was responsible for several past Leonid meteor storms. In 1995, Peter Jenniskens predicted the 1995 Alpha Monocerotids outburst from dust trails. In anticipation of the 1999 Leonid storm, Robert H. McNaught , David Asher , and Finland's Esko Lyytinen were the first to apply this method in the West. In 2006 Jenniskens published predictions for future dust trail encounters covering

6241-454: Was transferred to the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). As a result of this transition, JPL became the agency's primary planetary spacecraft center, leading the design and operation of various lunar and interplanetary missions. The transfer to NASA marked the beginning of a "Golden Age" of planetary exploration for JPL in the 1960s and 1970s. JPL engineers designed and operated Ranger and Surveyor missions to

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