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Just a year after it was dispatched on the first mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, the APL-built New Horizons spacecraft is on the doorstep of the solar system's largest planet — about to swing past Jupiter and pick up even more speed on its voyage toward the unexplored regions of the planetary frontier.

NASA will host a news briefing at 1 p.m. EST, Thursday, Jan. 18, to preview the flight of the APL-built New Horizons spacecraft through the Jupiter system.

New findings indicate that the aurora and other near-Earth space weather are driven by the rate at which the Earth's and Sun's magnetic fields connect, or merge, and not by the solar wind's electric field as was previously assumed.

NASA's TIMED (Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics) mission, operated by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), celebrated its 5th launch anniversary on Dec. 7, 2006, and its many contributions enabling a greater understanding of Earth's upper atmosphere.

APL's Center will be one of five funded by CDC to conduct research leading to major scientific advances in public health informatics.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in Laurel, Md., has been awarded a contract for initial design work on the Lightweight Electro-Optical Space Sensor (LEOSS) program, managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.

Dr. "Tag" Cutchis, a senior engineer at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., has been named to the "Scientific American 50," the magazine's annual list of leaders in science and technology that will appear in its December issue.

Ms. Kristin Gray is the new head of the Office of Technology Transfer at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in Laurel, Md.

NASA's STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) spacecraft — en route as the first mission to capture the sun in 3-D — successfully launched tonight aboard a single Delta II vehicle from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., at 8:52 p.m. EDT.

During its first week of observations from low orbit, NASA's newest Mars spacecraft is already revealing new clues about both recent and ancient environments on the red planet.