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Photo of Johns Hopkins APL’s Camera Reveals Surprise for NASA’s Lucy Mission in First Asteroid Encounter
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Johns Hopkins APL’s Camera Reveals Surprise for NASA’s Lucy Mission in First Asteroid Encounter

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Mission Operations

Unique and Efficient Spacecraft Operations

On any given day, APL mission operations teams are controlling up to six active spacecraft across the solar system, while also working on developing missions and proposed space exploration concepts. 

Space missions typically begin with a set of science objectives. APL’s Mission Operations (MOps) engineers design, implement and execute the operational scheme for a spacecraft to achieve mission science objectives with minimal risk and maximum efficiency. MOps ensures the health and safety of the spacecraft and implements science team requirements, engineering needs, and navigation operations. Our teams perform complete mission planning for the spacecraft and for payload operations and also perform command sequencing and validation and comprehensive mission analysis covering all flight systems.

Our efforts begin well before launch. During design, MOps checks that spacecraft subsystem designs are pragmatic and meet operational needs. We test operation concepts, plan for contingencies, and test and validate commands before uploading to a spacecraft. After launch, MOps commissions the spacecraft, assesses mission performance, observes spacecraft trending, verifies data downlinks and oversees anomaly resolution. APL missions often have unique operations plans, many that include hibernation, beacon or autonomous modes while conducting complex maneuvers on spacecraft in remote corners of our solar system. The team’s primary goal: accomplish science mission objectives while preserving resources and maintaining costs.

Missions

APL has designed, built and operated more than 70 innovative spacecraft over its six decades of spaceflight experience. Click below to learn about some of the missions that made revolutionary discoveries, and spacecraft that will push the boundaries of exploration and investigate outstanding scientific mysteries.

Learn more about MESSENGER
Rendering of the MESSENGER spacecraft flying over false-colored surface of Mercury

MESSENGER

MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) was the first mission to orbit Mercury, shedding unprecedented light on the origins and evolution of the innermost planet.

Stories

Go inside APL’s space missions and research, and check out the latest news, features and discoveries from the teams that are probing mysteries from the Sun to the edge of the solar system and beyond.

Parker Solar Probe approaching sun
Dec 15, 2023

Parker Solar Probe Team Garners NASA Honors

NASA's Parker Solar Probe team has earned agency honors for its novel efforts to guide a spacecraft toward record-setting close distances from the Sun - and revealing more about our star than mission planners and scientists ever expected.
A metallic trophy with two intersecting silver arches with silver spokes emanating from each to hold up a silver ball in the middle
Nov 7, 2023

DART Team Earns Smithsonian Michael Collins Trophy for Successful Planetary Defense Test Mission

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be honored with the 2024 Michael Collins Trophy for Current Achievement. For its work developing and managing the first-ever planetary defense test mission, the team at Johns Hopkins APL and NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) is being lauded for outstanding achievements in the fields of aerospace science and technology.
An illustration of a gold-colored spacecraft with large solar panels crashing into a coarse asteroid in space. Golden streams flow behind the spacecraft, giving the illusion that it's moving quickly.
Sep 26, 2023

From Impact to Innovation: A Year of Science and Triumph for Historic DART Mission

Last fall, the world watched as the DART spacecraft — the Double Asteroid Redirection Test — guided itself toward the asteroid Dimorphos for a direct collision, a major technical achievement and the first successful planetary defense test in history. Revisit DART's triumphant collision and the resulting year of science analysis and discoveries that followed.