--- category: "U.S. Government" aliases: - Jet Propulsion Laboratory - JPL - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory - Jet Propulsion Lab - Jet Lab tags: - Organization - Rocketry - Caltech - NASA - Army - Pasadena - GALCIT - SecurityClearance - Space summary: "Caltech laboratory in Pasadena that grew from GALCIT Project No. 1 in 1944, built Army missiles until 1958, and transferred to NASA on December 3, 1958; its staff figured in several 1950 security cases." location: "Pasadena, California" relations: - type: owned with: "[[California Institute of Technology]]" reverse: true start: 1944-06 role: "laboratory under contract to the Army, then NASA" fn: 1 - type: contractor_to with: "[[United States Army]]" start: 1944 end: 1958-12-03 role: "developer of the Private, WAC Corporal, Corporal and Sergeant missiles and the Explorer 1 satellite work with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency" fn: 2 - type: contractor_to with: "[[NASA]]" start: 1958-12-03 role: "formally transferred from the Army to NASA" fn: 7 - type: director_of with: "[[Frank Malina]]" start: 1944-06 end: 1946 role: "laboratory directed by Malina" fn: 1 - type: employed_by with: "[[Qian Xuesen]]" reverse: true start: 1944 end: 1950 role: "section chief and theoretician, Jet Propulsion Laboratory" fn: 4 - type: employed_by with: "[[Sidney Weinbaum]]" reverse: true end: 1950-06 role: "laboratory employee, reported by FBI informants as county organizer of Professional Unit 122" fn: 4 created: 2026-10-05 updated: 2026-10-09 --- The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a laboratory of the [[California Institute of Technology]] in the Arroyo Seco at Pasadena. Its historian, Erik Conway, writes that GALCIT Project No. 1 "officially became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in June 1944," remaining a Caltech organization though not yet a division of the Institute, with [[Theodore von Kármán]] as chair of its executive board.[^1] The project's history is given at [[GALCIT Rocket Research Project]]. ### Army period [[Frank Malina]] drew on Caltech faculty and outside hires: the electrical engineer [[William Pickering]] set up guidance and controls, the aeronautics professor [[Louis Dunn]] became assistant director and later director, and [[Homer J. Stewart]] headed research and analysis.[^1] The laboratory built three series of complete rockets: the Private (about eight feet tall, range about ten miles, first complete rocket), the WAC Corporal (first fired October 11, 1945 at [[White Sands Proving Ground]], New Mexico) and the guided Corporal, which the Army in 1950 asked to be made a deployable nuclear-weapon system; in May 1952 the Army ordered 200 Corporal missiles.[^1] Conway records that Malina and [[Qian Xuesen]] enlarged some of the Private's fins into wings, with unsuccessful results.[^1] The Sergeant contract followed in 1954, shortly before Pickering became the third director.[^1] The laboratory worked with the [[Army Ballistic Missile Agency]] at [[Redstone Arsenal]], where Army leaders had settled [[Wernher von Braun]]'s group, and the launch of Explorer 1 took place at 10:48 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on January 31, 1958.[^2][^3] ### Security cases of 1950 to 1952 The laboratory's staff and records appear in the FBI files of 1950 to 1952. The FBI's Los Angeles reports on [[Sidney Weinbaum]], a Jet Propulsion Laboratory employee, record Informant T-2 as stating that he was a member of Professional Unit 122 of the Communist Party in Pasadena and its county organizer, and that Qian, then section chief at the laboratory, had been entertained at the Weinbaum home and had corresponded with the Weinbaums before Weinbaum's hiring.[^4] The report also notes that "as of a recent date" Weinbaum had been terminated from the laboratory; he was arrested for perjury on June 16, 1950, the same date on which the "denial of consent" to Qian dated June 6, 1950 was delivered to Caltech.[^4] Weinbaum was convicted.[^4] When the FBI recovered seven GALCIT Project No. 1 reports from [[Jack Parsons]] in December 1950, the laboratory advised the FBI by letter of December 29, 1950 that, in the present active sense, three were confidential, one restricted and three unclassified, and that all could be downgraded to unclassified; it stated that it had no authority to downgrade them because the Air Force had sponsored the research. The FBI recorded a statement that security regulations at the laboratory during Parsons's employment had been lax, with no charge-out system for reports.[^5] The Army's Counter Intelligence Division advised in 1951 that the work had continued under the administrative direction of the Army Chief of Ordnance and that some papers contained proprietary information of [[Aerojet]] and [[Thiokol]].[^5] Malina, the laboratory's first director, was the subject of the 1952 sealed indictment described on his page.[^6] ### Transfer to NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, signed July 29, did not change the status of JPL or the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. Pickering and the NASA administrator T. Keith Glennan wanted the laboratory moved into [[NASA]], the Army resisted, and JPL was formally transferred on December 3, 1958. Pickering said the principal consideration for Caltech was the opportunity to leave classified military research for space science.[^7] ### Footnotes [^1]: Conway, Erik M., "From Rockets to Spacecraft: Making JPL a Place for Planetary Science," Engineering & Science (Caltech), no. 4 (2007), pp. 4-8, calteches.library.caltech.edu/702/2/Spacecraft.pdf. [^2]: Conway, Engineering & Science no. 4 (2007), pp. 8-10. [^3]: NASA, "Explorer 1," section "The Launch" (Cape Canaveral, Florida, 10:48 p.m. EST, Jan. 31, 1958), https://www.nasa.gov/mission/explorer-1/; NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "Explorer 1" (launch date Jan. 31, 1958), https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/explorer-1/; U.S. Army, Redstone Arsenal Historical Information, "1958," entry for 31 January 1958 (Jupiter C missile RS-29 placed Explorer I into orbit), https://history.redstone.army.mil/ihist-1958.html [^4]: FBI, "Hsue-Shen Tsien," Los Angeles file 65-4857, reports of 1949 and 1950 (Informant T-2; Weinbaum; denial of consent letter of June 6, 1950; Weinbaum arrest June 16, 1950), archive.org/details/fbi-file-tsien-hsue-shen (FBIFile_Tsien_Part1 and Part2). [^5]: FBI, "John Whiteside Parsons," file 65-59589, Part 2 (reports of December 1950 and January 1951; Army and Air Force memoranda of 1951), archive.org/details/JohnParsons. [^6]: FBI, "Frank J. Malina," Los Angeles file 100-8196, memoranda of 1952 and 1953, archive.org/details/FrankMalina (Frank Malina 02). [^7]: Conway, Engineering & Science no. 4 (2007), p. 10.