Welcome
SPRL Celebrates 60 Years
Join us October 16-17, 2008 as we discuss the role of universities in space exploration and engineering. Visit the SPRL at 60 website for more information and to register for the symposium.
The Space Physics Research Laboratory was established in the early post-war years at a time of tremendous renewed national optimism and energy. Its original mandate — the in-depth experimental and theoretical study of the natural world using state-of-the-art instruments and models — has remained a constant guiding star over the many intervening years. The earliest work at SPRL involved captured World War II V-2 rockets. Using these and other space-borne platforms, SPRL scientists and engineers pioneered measurements in the Earth's upper atmosphere and ionosphere, helping to write the textbooks on atmospheric science and aeronomy. SPRL subsequently expanded into the fields of planetary atmospheres, solar and heliospheric physics, and oceanography. In the most recent two decades, SPRL faculty and engineers have built more than 30 space instruments, instrumented numerous sounding rockets, balloons and aircraft, and developed ground-based instruments.
Over its more than six decades, the laboratory has maintained a strong reputation as one of a handful of university centers able to conceive, design, construct, test, operate and analyze data from space flight instruments — a truly "end-to-end" operation. It has also established tremendous strengths in theory and modeling, with interest spanning interdisciplinary studies of the earth, planets, and other objects and plasma regions within and beyond the solar system. These combined strengths will serve the Laboratory well in attempting to meet the challenges of tomorrow.