Lisa Blodgett, formerly mission area executive for sea control at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, has been appointed to lead the APL’s force projection sector. APL said Monday Blodgett will succeed Dan Tyler, who will retire from the laboratory after 45 years of service, and be responsible for the precision strike, sea control and […] More

A NASA spacecraft with a Ball Aerospace & Technologies-built camera is scheduled to arrive at Pluto on July 14. Ball Aerospace said Wednesday the 23-pound Ralph camera will work to gather images of the planet as the New Horizons spacecraft performs flybys within 7,000 miles of Pluto. “We know so little about Pluto that we expect the mission […] More

NASA has picked nine out of 33 scientific instrument proposals for the agency’s planned space mission to investigate whether the structure of a Jupiter moon could support life. The agency said Monday it aims to build and put a solar-powered spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter for three years to study the planet’s Europa moon. Participants […] More

NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging spacecraft crashed into the planet Mercury’s surface on April 30 as planned, marking the completion of its four-year mission orbiting the planet. NASA said Friday the impact, estimated to have created a crater up to 50 feet wide on the planet’s surface, was confirmed by mission controllers at the […] More

NASA‘s Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft has uncovered several key information about the planet Mercury during its nearly four years of on-orbit operations. NASA said Thursday the Messenger spacecraft is now anticipated to crash-land on Mercury by the end of the month as it runs out of helium gas propellant following a series of orbit correction maneuvers. “While spacecraft […] More

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has received the go-ahead to start building NASA’s Solar Probe Plus spacecraft following a critical design review of its full mission plan by an independent agency panel. The plan includes how the SPP team will perform construction and testing of the spacecraft tasked to study the outer atmosphere […] More

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory will develop a retinal prosthesis system with $4 million in funding from Mann Fund. The lab will will work with Second Sight Medical Products Inc. to embed vision and eye tracking sensors into the glasses for the system to identify obstacles, doorways, hallways and objects within a household, Johns Hopkins APL said […] More

James Miller, formerly defense undersecretary for policy, has joined Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory as a senior fellow. Miller brings to the lab a background in nuclear deterrence, missile defense, space policy and cyber warfare, APL said Friday. He served as the principal civilian adviser to the defense secretary on strategy, policy and operations and also as deputy […] More

Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory says it has experienced record growth for initiatives to move its scientific discoveries into the commercial sector in 2014. APL said Wednesday it signed 77 license agreements covering lab-developed technologies this year, up from 40 technology license deals recorded a year ago. The number of invention disclosures from the […] More

Ray Harris is chief information officer at Iron Bow Technologies and brings more than 20 years of enterprise technology, management and cybersecurity experience to the role. He has led the company’s efforts to build an enterprise resource planning system and a central database for managing business functions and performance across the organization. Harris also implemented […] More

Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory will host a research center for the Justice Department‘s National Institute of Justice to test and conduct operational evaluations of non-forensic technologies for state and local law enforcement, corrections agencies, and courts. APL has signed a five-year cooperative agreement with DOJ to house the National Criminal Justice Technology Research, Test and […] More

NASA has launched the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory-built Balloon Observation Platform for Planetary Science into space in order to study solar system objects. The spacecraft took off from the Fort Sumner, New Mexico-based NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Research Facility on Thursday and will work to detect organic elements on objects in the solar system, NASA said Thursday. BOPPS […] More