We solve complex research, engineering, and analytical problems that present critical challenges to our nation. APL—the nation’s largest university affiliated research center—provides U.S. government agencies with deep expertise in specialized fields to support national priorities and technology development programs. We also serve as independent trusted technical agents to the government, providing continuity for highly complex, multigenerational technology development systems.
Our purpose is to make critical contributions to critical challenges. At APL, we feel it is our responsibility to try to solve these national challenges with the full measure of our dedication and expertise.
The Lab’s core values are unquestionable integrity, trusted service to the nation, world-class expertise, and game-changing impact—all in an environment that is collaborative, fulfilling (and even fun!).
APL’s purpose and core values guide our future, and it is no less than to create defining innovations that ensure our nation’s preeminence in the 21st century.
June 30, 2022
To improve collaborative decision making between human and machine, researchers at APL created an artificial intelligence agent called Cyclone and trained it to play a cooperative card game through a unique learning process: train Cyclone to play like a human so it can play well with humans.
June 23, 2022
Roshni Arun is just a week out of high school, but the ASPIRE intern is already on a mission to empower young women in STEM and increase student access to Johns Hopkins APL’s resources.
June 23, 2022
Three initiatives from APL were honored in Fast Company magazine’s 2022 World Changing Ideas awards, each earning an honorable mention.
June 22, 2022
By studying a landslide on the asteroid Bennu, a team of scientists led by Johns Hopkins APL’s Mark Perry has gained new insight into the surface strength — or weakness — of so-called rubble-pile asteroids, the loose collections of smaller rocks and dust held together by their own gravity.
June 21, 2022
In a last hurrah for an imager entering its final months of operation, the CRISM team at Johns Hopkins APL is releasing a new near-global map of Mars produced by the instrument. The first of what will be thousands of pieces colored to convey the mineral composition of the Martian surface were released on Wednesday.
June 17, 2022
On its journey to collide with an asteroid in the world’s first planetary defense test mission, NASA’s DART captured images of the nearby and very bright star Vega in a test of how light scatters off of the spacecraft’s camera DRACO and other internal parts.
June 17, 2022
Years of APL engineering and technical leadership for the Missile Defense Agency Ground Sensors Directorate culminated last December as Lockheed Martin built and installed the multimission Long Range Discrimination Radar at Clear Space Force Station, Alaska.
June 14, 2022
APL has transferred the rights to a tool that streamlines the process for reporting foreign travel to SIMS Software, the leading provider of security information management software to the government and defense industries.
June 13, 2022
Asteroid Phaethon’s bizarrely blue color has long been a planetary science puzzle, but a study co-authored by Johns Hopkins APL’s Carey Lisse may have finally untangled the chemical process that gave the asteroid its azure hue.
June 7, 2022
After nearly 12 years of design iterations and construction, two trips across the country and thousands of hours of labor, APL has delivered NASA’s Europa Clipper propulsion module — the spacecraft’s “workhorse” — and its radio frequency (RF) module to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California for integration with the remainder of the spacecraft.
June 2, 2022
APL researchers are standardizing an amazing collection of high-resolution brain mapping data, an effort that would enable unprecedented analysis and make the Laboratory a focal point for neuroscience research.
