Teams from Caltech, JPL, Honored by NASA
Two missions led by Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which Caltech manages for NASA, have received recognition from NASA for outstanding achievements.
Caltech's Jamie Bock, the Marvin L. Goldberger Professor of Physics and JPL senior research scientist, is receiving NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer). Bock is the mission's principal investigator.
The medal is awarded for "exceptional scientific contributions toward achievement of NASA's mission and is given for individual efforts that have resulted in a key scientific discovery or led to contributions of fundamental importance in a given field or significantly enhanced understanding of the field."
SPHEREx, launched in March 2025, is a space telescope studying the birth of our universe, the evolution of galaxies, and interstellar ices in regions of our Milky Way galaxy where stars and planets form. Over its two-year planned mission, the SPHEREx Observatory will collect data on more than 450 million galaxies along with more than 100 million stars in the Milky Way.
"Despite its modest size, SPHEREx addresses some of the most fundamental questions in science," Bock says. "It is performing well in space thanks to our fantastic team of scientists, managers, and engineers."
JPL research fellow Paul Rosen is receiving NASA's Outstanding Public Leadership Award for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite (NISAR). The honor is awarded for "notable leadership accomplishments that have significantly influenced NASA's mission," and highlights "sustained leadership and exceptionally high-impact leadership achievements [that] demonstrate the individual's effectiveness in advancing NASA's goals and image in present and future terms." Rosen is NISAR's project scientist.
NISAR, launched in July 2025, is designed to observe and take measurements of some of Earth's most complex processes, including ecosystem disturbances, ice-sheet collapse, and natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides. Data collected from NISAR is revealing information about the evolution and state of Earth's crust, helping scientists better understand our planet's processes and changing climate, and aiding future resource and hazard management. The mission is a partnership between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization.
"NISAR is changing the way we observe Earth using microwaves, covering all land and ice-covered surfaces at fine resolution and at a weekly cadence," Rosen says. "This reliable, versatile, first-of-a-kind, and analysis-ready dataset is a gamechanger for scientists and applications developers in broad areas, from tracking the seismic and carbon cycles, to ice dynamics and its relation to sea level, and to infrastructure monitoring, agriculture, and disaster response. It has been a privilege to work with NASA and ISRO on this mission to make this vision a reality."
Captured through clouds by NISAR on Nov. 10, 2025, this image shows Portland, Oregon, and the Columbia River to its north.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
An observation made by NASAs SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) shows the chemical signatures of water ice (shown in bright blue) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (orange) in Cygnus X, one of the most active and turbulent regions of star birth in our Milky Way galaxy. One of SPHERExs main goals is to map the chemical signatures of various types of interstellar ice. This ice includes molecules like water, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide, which are vital to the chemistry that allows life to develop.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC/Hora et al.
