On January 8, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced its closure. The reason was the devastating fires that hit Los Angeles.
In early January, numerous wildfires raged in the hills of Los Angeles County. They flared up because of the drought (since October 1, 2024, the Los Angeles airport has received only 0.8 mm of precipitation, which is an anti-record) and the so-called “Santa Ana winds”: a regular local climatic phenomenon characterized by wind gusts up to 160 km/h.
An image taken on January 7, 2025, by the Sentinel-2 satellite shows smoke from one of the fires that broke out near the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. By January 9, the fire had moved west along Pacific Highway toward Malibu and had scorched more than 60 square kilometers, destroying at least a thousand homes.
On the evening of January 7, another fire, called Eaton, broke out north of the center of Los Angeles. The fire quickly spread to more than 10,000 acres, destroying parts of Pasadena and Altadena.
Due to the fire, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) located near Pasadena had to announce its closure to employees and visitors. Only a small number of critical personnel remain on site. All space mission communications operations were moved to the backup center. So far, the fire has not spread to the JPL building complex itself — but based on recent reports, it appears to have gotten very close to them. It is also known that many NASA employees who lived in Pasadena have been left homeless.
A total of five major fires are still raging in the Los Angeles area at the moment, with 150,000 people living in the evacuation zone. Nearly 1,500 firefighters are involved in extinguishing them, but due to gale force winds it is still impossible to contain the spread of the fire. Strong wind gusts are also hampering rescuers, who cannot use helicopters to fight fires. According to the National Weather Service in Los Angeles, fire conditions will persist in the coming days.
