(Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
USC IS WEIGHING an entry into the looming competition to operate NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the school’s president, Beong-Soo Kim, told L.A. Material in an interview.
An arrangement “could take many different forms” and USC is among several institutions “that are thinking about potential opportunities,” Kim added.
JPL, which is run by Caltech and funded largely by NASA, is one of the crown jewels of the American space program. Its researchers have explored every planet in the solar system; designed and operated all but one of six rovers that humans have landed on Mars; and built both America’s first satellite and humanity’s first interstellar spacecraft.
USC’s interest in the lab is still tentative. But the revelation that USC could seek a role in running JPL is one of the first public insights into the high-stakes — and highly secretive — scramble to determine the future of the La Cañada Flintridge laboratory, which Caltech has operated since 1936.
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