News Releases

The Johns Hopkins APL team building the MEGANE spectrometer for Japan’s MMX mission to the Martian moons recently shipped a test model of the instrument. The model will determine how well the instrument fits in the spacecraft design.

Scientists from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) are discussing new ideas and plans for NASA missions to the Sun, asteroids, ocean worlds and beyond during the American Geophysical Union’s 2020 Fall Meeting, running online until Dec. 17.

If we ever think we’ve found signs of life elsewhere in the solar system, how would we convince ourselves that they’re real? A research team at APL is developing new palm-sized tools to help address that problem, targeting some of the strongest molecular signs of life, and even designing a way to sequence genetic material found on another world.

The Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering launched a new online graduate program in artificial intelligence for working professionals this summer, and some 70 students are now enrolled, learning from AI engineers and scientists in one of the highest-demand career fields in the nation. The new program was formed in partnership with APL, as the Lab and the university advance their national leadership in the booming sector.

APL researchers have shown that giving arm amputees sensory stimulation enhances the perception of their phantom hand and leads to more reliable and repeatable muscle movement signals, which are used to better control a prosthetic arm.

In a live pilot led by Johns Hopkins APL, a new automated data feed that helps defend state and local government computer systems from cyberattacks and rapidly blocks threats across state lines reduced cyber defense time from some three days to less than three minutes in a successful pilot program across four states.

APL is partnering with the Howard County Government to develop a study that will determine SARS-CoV-2 antibody prevalence in the county population. The APL-led study will leverage the Laboratory’s expertise in health surveillance and data science to help provide Howard County leadership with a clearer picture of the virus’ spread through the county population.

With the process to develop spacecraft instrument parts through additive manufacturing continuing to improve, APL is taking the plunge with its own additively manufactured metal part for an instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer mission.

The APL-built Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft will be outfitted with several new technologies for its journey toward its asteroid target. One of those systems — NASA’s NEXT-C ion propulsion engine — was installed last week.

There aren’t many interns who can say that they made a discovery about the Moon before they finished their undergraduate degree, but that’s not the case for Jordan Bretzfelder, an APL intern. In a recent study, Bretzfelder announced the discovery of rocks within the Moon’s Imbrium Basin — the largest of the dark areas visible to us on Earth — that are consistent with the minerals scientists expect to make up the lunar mantle.