The wildfire engulfed the driverless car. And it turned and approached the main NASA center.
After breaking out in the wooded hills outside Los Angeles’ community of Altadena, the Eaton Fire — one of the most devastating floods to hit the region — has burned catastrophically through homes and businesses, destroying 4,627 structures since Jan. 15. This disaster injured firefighters and took lives. A NASA instrument, aboard the plane, captured a shocking view of the scorched area – and revealed how close it was to NASA’s famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The lab was closed on January 8 as the area was evacuated due to severe fire conditions. It is responsible for building and leading missions such as Voyager, the Mars rover, and efforts around other worlds.
A NASA scientist viewed the first images of Voyager. What he saw made him cold.
The view below shows the impacts as of Jan. 11, where the fire burned 14,117 hectares. You’re seeing an image captured by NASA’s AVIRIS-3 instrument, or Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-3, flying aboard a high-altitude aircraft on an Earth observation mission.
– The most burned and affected areas, with burned trees and burned buildings in Altadena and parts of nearby communities, are shown in dark brown, although some brown and green areas have burned, too.
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– Wildfire areas, where the fire started (the cause of which is still under investigation) appear in orange.
Areas burned by the Eaton Fire since Jan. 11, 2025, as recorded by NASA’s AVIRIS-3 instrument.
Credit: NASA / Airborne Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-3 (AVIRIS-3) / Lauren Dauphin
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As the image above shows, the fire is closer than 1 kilometer, or 0.6 miles, from JPL.
The conditions were perfect for the flames. A remarkably hot summer — July 2024 was California’s hottest month on record — combined with a near-record fall and powerful storms to drive fires and embers far from urban areas.
As the vegetation turned into embers, the flames could not be contained.
The JPL campus has so far remained unscathed. But not its employees.
“Thankfully, the laboratory was not affected by the fire due to the brave sacrifice of our first responders,” the center recently posted online. “But our community has been hit hard with more than 150 JPLs losing their homes, and many left homeless.”
