NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

NASA's lead center for robotic space exploration — a federally funded R&D center managed by Caltech. Builds and operates the Mars rovers (Curiosity, Perseverance), the Voyager probes, and the Deep Space Network. Beyond the missions it is one of LA's largest compute/data operations: petabyte-scale mission data, deep-space signal processing, and mission supercomputing. The overlooked through-line for the LA edition — the same region that renders Hollywood's films processes the solar system's data.