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The wildfires raging around Los Angeles have made plenty of headlines lately, though they are slowly starting to get under control. NASA was a part of that effort, tracking the fire\u2019s evolution via the Airborne Visible\/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-3 (AVIRIS-3) as they raged through southern California. As they were doing so, they likely realized that these fires posed an extreme risk to one vital part of NASA itself \u2013 the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n JPL is one of NASA\u2019s most prolific centers, nestled in the hills around Pasadena, California. Employees there are responsible for missions as wide-ranging as Psyche, which will soon visit the \u201cQueen of the asteroid belt,\u201d and Ingenuity, the helicopter that performed the first-ever powered flight on another planet.<\/p>\n Despite having their eyes set on the heavens, JPL\u2019s engineers, technicians, and administrators still have to deal with earthly matters occasionally. It receives around $2.4 billion annually in funding from NASA, representing around 10% of the agency\u2019s budget. However, over the past years, the center has laid off almost 1,000 employees out of the approximately 6,000 that work there. Those layoffs were mainly due to budgetary constraints and difficulties with some missions they were planning, such as the struggling Mars Sample Return mission.<\/p>\n \n