Brinson Exploration Hub Projects Make the Invisible Visible
Three innovative new projects to explore Earth and the cosmos have been selected to move forward through the Brinson Exploration Hub at Caltech. The projects, each with a co-lead based on Caltech's campus and another from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), will map the mysterious filaments of matter between galaxies using ultraviolet light, use seismic waves to image Antarctic glaciers, and deploy an autonomous underwater vehicle to measure water and ice properties beneath ice shelves near the poles. Another concept, focused on lunar exploration, will continue into an exploratory phase for further development.
These projects are the first to be selected through the Brinson Exploration Hub, which was established at Caltech in 2024. The first proposal cycle elicited submissions from a diverse collection of teams from Caltech's campus and JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA.
In alignment with the Brinson Hub's "fundamental pillars," the projects have been selected for their ability to drive scientific and societal benefit, take advantage of emerging opportunities in the broader Earth and space exploration ecosystem, and be executed with speed and risk tolerance. Each project also includes an embedded educational component, reflecting the Brinson Hub's commitment to cultivating "space-savvy alumni." Finally, the projects advance the broader ambitions of Caltech and JPL.
The Brinson Exploration Hub was launched through a $100 million gift from The Brinson Foundation to empower scientists and engineers from campus and JPL to collaborate on boundary-pushing science projects that develop and test new research and instrumentation and deepen our understanding of the universe. This collaboration, which embraces external partnership opportunities including with commercial and nonprofit entities, enables higher-risk project implementation on faster timescales and at lower cost than is typically possible through conventional means.
"We were looking for more than good ideas; we were looking for teams ready to build and deploy," says Brinson Hub director Mark Simons, the John W. and Herberta M. Miles Professor of Geophysics at Caltech. "These projects stood out not just for their potential impact, but for the real progress their teams had already made toward implementation. Each one reflects the spirit of the Brinson Hub: a willingness to take smart risks, to move quickly, and to collaborate across disciplines and institutions. This first portfolio is helping us learn how to do things differently, how to get from concept to deployment with urgency and purpose." Each selected project is at a different stage of development, ranging from early maturation to full implementation.
Mapping the Invisible Universe
Throughout his career, Chris Martin, the Edward C. Stone Professor of Physics and director of Caltech Optical Observatories, has been thinking about how to make the invisible architecture of the universe visible. Only 5 percent of all normal matter in the universe exists in galaxies like our Milky Way; the other 95 percent is distributed in diffuse filamentous strands that crisscross the universe like a spiderweb, found around galaxies in the circumgalactic medium and between them in the intergalactic medium. Martin had dreamed up plans for how to image the faint cosmic web in the ultraviolet spectrum, but it was not until a fortuitous encounter at a Brinson Hub Workshop in 2024, where he met JPL systems engineer Laura Jones-Wilson, that those dreams started to become reality.
Earlier in her career at JPL, Jones-Wilson was part of a team of engineers that built a telescope called STABLE (Subarc sec Telescope And BaLloon Experiment), a high-precision telescope system designed for use on scientific balloons. The telescope was never deployed and remained packaged in a box in a JPL warehouse for years.
At the Brinson Hub workshop, Jones-Wilson attended a presentation by Martin on how a balloon-based telescope could be used to image the cosmic web. High-altitude balloons are a simple way to loft telescopes above Earth's obscuring atmosphere without having to launch them on costly rockets. Jones-Wilson realized that she had a telescope—the now-boxed-up STABLE—that might be perfect for imaging the cosmic web.
"I told Chris that there was a telescope just sitting, waiting to be used," Jones-Wilson says. "It was an amazing and fortuitous occurrence, and we continued to develop the concept during the workshop and thereafter."
The collaboration led to their Brinson Hub proposal for the STABLE Cosmic Web Imager (SCWI), a high-altitude-balloon-borne telescope to map the cosmic structures that offer insights into the formation and evolution of our galaxy. The balloon will circumnavigate the South Pole for weeks, observing the ultraviolet emissions from both the circumgalactic medium and the intergalactic medium, 7 billion light-years away. SCWI will set the stage for larger missions to explore the cosmos, such as NASA's Ultraviolet Explorer (targeted to launch in 2030 and led by Caltech's Fiona Harrison, the Harold A. Rosen Professor of Physics).
"It's important to understand how we—humans, our solar system, our galaxy—got here," Martin says. "It gives us perspective on our place in the universe. It is the basic cultural context that every human who has ever lived exists in. I think that's why people are drawn to space exploration; it's a form of history. We're mapping things that have never been mapped before."
The team is currently in a year-long maturation phase, during which they are refining the UV instrument design, inspecting the STABLE payload, and securing funding for full implementation.
The Inhospitable Frontier
Antarctica is, in many ways, an alien environment: Its harsh conditions are inhospitable to life, and its remote nature makes access difficult. But the region is critical to understand as melting ice from Antarctic glaciers and ice sheets continues to impact sea level rise around the world. Specifically, the grounding line of an Antarctic glacier—the interface where it protrudes from land and floats on seawater—is one of the most inaccessible regions of the world. However, the manner in which glaciers respond to ocean tides illustrates how these complex natural systems will behave under a changing climate.
A collaboration between Zhongwen Zhan (PhD '13), professor of geophysics and the Clarence R. Allen Leadership Chair and director of Caltech's Seismological Laboratory; and JPL's Joel Steinkraus, systems engineer in the Technology Infusion Group; aims to make this remote zone visible through seismic imaging. Their project, GLASS (Grounding zone Long-term Acoustic Sensing of Structure), will deploy up to 10 kilometers of fiber-optic cable on Antarctica's Union Glacier, located near the West Antarctic Peninsula. Using a technique called distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), the team will send beams of laser light down the fiber-optic cables and measure how light traveling through the fiber is perturbed by seismic waves. This can be used to essentially image the ice-ocean interface as tides move the floating ice shelf.
"We've done a lot with DAS in the past, but this is different," Zhan says. "We're pushing the technology in ways we haven't before—designing for extreme conditions, building quickly, and aiming for real scientific return on a short timeline. That's what makes this exciting. We're not just testing a new instrument; we're trying to unlock a part of Earth that's been hidden from view."
Zhan has deployed DAS on fiber-optic cables around the world, but because of Antarctica's harsh conditions, the team will be using a new version of DAS that is lightweight and low power. Their timeline is ambitious (with only 9 months from kickoff to deployment) and like any rapid development, comes with risks and challenges. But the team is confident—DAS has been extensively tested for different uses, using seismic waves to image parts of the crust–mantle boundary, measure the movement of groundwater, and even capture rumblings from individual floats in the annual Rose Parade in Pasadena. Ultimately, the new version of DAS could be deployed to the Moon—another harsh, inhospitable environment—to study seismic processes in the lunar interior.
"The Antarctic region is like the interior of Earth or the bottom of the ocean. This environment is very hard to understand, and we're trying to shed light on it," Steinkraus says. "When you send things to Mars and into orbit, you're a bit divorced from seeing how your hardware is deployed. This is more tangible. We're going to unique places and standing in the environment where you'll get the science, one of the most isolated and inhospitable places on Earth."
The team plans to conduct a full deployment in Antarctica in late 2025.
Beneath the Antarctic ice
Another Brinson Exploration Hub-funded project called SURGE (SUbsurface Robotics for Grounding zone Exploration) also focuses on Antarctic ice shelves. Rather than seismic sensors, SURGE will deploy an autonomous underwater robotic vehicle to explore and make measurements in the frigid waters beneath the ice shelves. This zone, where ice and water meet, lies beneath hundreds of meters of ice and is thus difficult to access, but it holds the key to understanding how quickly ice shelves are melting, what factors influence those processes, and the implications of rising sea levels.
SURGE is a collaboration between Caltech's Andy Thompson, the John S. and Sherry Chen Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, director of the Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science, and executive officer for Environmental Science; and JPL's Paul Glick, robotics mechanical engineer in the Extreme Environment Robotic Systems Group.
The autonomous vehicle, called IceNode, will measure temperature, salinity, and melt rates from beneath ice shelves by attaching to the base of the ice shelf and then periodically floating with the underwater current to observe new sites.
"It's one of the hardest places to explore on Earth and, as such, is one of the least explored," Glick says. "Yet it is one of the most important locations, scientifically and societally."
The team is also working on an inexpensive and scalable manufacturing process in order to build dozens of IceNode robots that can be used by researchers around the world to conduct underwater science. Additionally, future missions to icy worlds like Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus may draw inspiration and lessons from IceNode's abilities in environments where communications are challenged by long distances and high underwater pressures.
"This kind of development would normally take years, and we're doing it in months," Thompson says. "We're creating a platform that can scale, one that opens access to places that are challenging to reach. The science demands it, and the urgency of understanding ice loss under climate change means we can't wait."
The team is currently evaluating potential sites for deployment in Antarctica and Greenland in 2026.
Exploring the Moon
The Brinson Exploration Hub is also supporting a feasibility study for a lunar mission concept that combines geophysical investigation with autonomous navigation. The proposed large-scale mission, called CLARITI (Caltech-JPL Lunar Autonomous Reconnaissance Investigation and Technology Infusion), involves a lunar orbiter that will map surface topography and gravity fields, measurements that would provide new insights into the Moon's interior structure and inform future exploration.
The feasibility study is focused on refining the mission architecture—its overall design and structure—and its alignment with potential partners. The study is co-led by Caltech's Aaron Ames, the Bren Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering and Control and Dynamical Systems, and JPL's Ryan Park, supervisor for the Solar System Dynamics Group. The study is facilitated by Allen Farrington, program area manager in JPL's Office of Technology, Infusion, and Strategy, and Katherine Park, strategic planner in JPL's Office of Strategy and Formulation.
"CLARITI presents an exciting opportunity to explore a new approach to space mission formulation," says Andy Klesh, associate director of the Brinson Exploration Hub. "It brings together many elements we value, and we're exploring additional architectures that match the Brinson Hub's pace, scale, and partnership-driven model. It's a chance to reimagine how we design missions to be more agile and adaptable."
Together, these projects reflect the Brinson Exploration Hub's core mission: to accelerate breakthrough science, develop and deploy rapidly, and foster a deep collaboration between researchers on Caltech's campus and at JPL.
Laura Jones-Wilson and Chris Martin at the Balloons for Science Workshop at Caltech.
Deploying ICENODE through the ice.
Zhongwen Zhan swinging a sledgehammer at the Antarctic ice
Credit: Zhongwen Zhan
The SCWI telescope being loaded into the Resnick Sustainability Center at Caltech.