The fires that spread destruction across the Los Angeles region this week and killed at least 11 people have spared two famed scientific facilities: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which has spearheaded planetary missions and astronomy efforts; and the historic Mount Wilson Observatory. Although the Eaton blaze that has destroyed nearly 5700 hectares and 7000 buildings in Altadena and Pasadena, California, stayed an appreciable distance away from JPL, flames from that fire continued to climb toward Mount Wilson until eventually stopping at the edge of the observatory’s grounds on 9 January.
“Thanks to the efforts of our firefighters and observatory staff, no buildings or infrastructure have been destroyed” at these facilities, said Anthony Marrone, Los Angeles County fire chief, in a press briefing this afternoon. Still, JPL Director Laurie Leshin said on the social media platform X that more than 150 of her staff have lost their homes to fire. And some Mount Wilson employees have evacuated and don’t know when they can return. Similarly, “For us, the story is about our employees, and not about the facility” says Veronica McGregor, a spokesperson for JPL.
In preparation for the Eaton fire, one of six scattered across Los Angeles, JPL moved operations of its Deep Space Network, an international network that commands and communicates with space-based missions, to a backup operations center and instructed all employees to work from home. According to McGregor, the facilities only sustained wind damage, although an inaccurate map circulating on social media stoked fears by showing the fire reaching JPL’s eastern gate.
The Mount Wilson Observatory about 20 kilometers northeast of JPL, once the site of the world’s largest telescope and the location where Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding, is largely used today for public outreach. Since 2004, it has also hosted the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) Array, six telescopes operated by Georgia State University that together study stars at a level of detail equivalent to spotting a nickel from 16,000 kilometers away.
