Student Researchers Return to JPL, Continuing a Pipeline That Has Outlasted Budget Cuts

Every June, the hallways at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory fill with new badges. The names change, but the pattern does not: hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students arrive to spend 10 weeks working alongside the engineers and scientists who build and operate spacecraft for NASA.

This summer’s cohort has arrived. Caltech announced the 2026 class of JPL summer interns in a social media post this month, published in conjunction with the university’s Student-Faculty Programs office, welcoming students across the lab’s multiple internship tracks to a full-time summer of work at the Pasadena-area facility. The post, which highlighted a new branded shirt design for the incoming class, described the program as an opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students to gain practical work experience they can apply to their studies when they return to school in the fall.

The annual program continues what is now a more-than-four-decade tradition — one that has trained more than 7,000 alumni through its flagship Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships — even as the laboratory navigates a period of significant institutional change.

JPL, a federally funded research and development center managed by Pasadena-based Caltech for NASA, has seen multiple rounds of layoffs since early 2024. The lab operates with approximately 5,500 regular employees, according to SpaceNews. In May, NASA announced it would open the lab’s management contract to competitive bidding for the first time — a process that could, in theory, end Caltech’s stewardship of the facility that Caltech researchers founded in 1936. Caltech’s contract runs through September 2028.

Against that backdrop, the summer interns show up anyway.

The welcome applies to students arriving through several program tracks. Under the SURF@JPL track, students collaborate with a mentor to define a research project, write a formal proposal, carry out the work over 10 weeks, produce a technical paper, and deliver an oral presentation at a symposium, according to Caltech’s Student-Faculty Programs website. Fellows in the SURF@JPL program receive a $9,600 award for the 10-week period in 2026. A separate track, the JPL Summer Internship Program managed by the JPL Education Office, offers similar placements with stipends disbursed monthly. Caltech’s Student-Faculty Programs office also supports NASA Space Grant, STAR, and ICONS programs at the lab.

Both the SURF@JPL and JPL Summer Internship programs require that students be U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents pursuing STEM degrees, with a minimum 3.0 GPA for the JPL Summer Internship Program. Students work full time — 40 hours a week — and are expected to contribute directly to NASA missions and science. Participants can live on the Caltech campus in Pasadena through a summer housing program available from June 16 through August 22, 2026, at a rate of $1,450 per month.

Adrian Ponce, who leads the team managing JPL’s internship programs, has said that the mentorship model is central to the lab’s mission. “Mentors are at the core of JPL’s mission, pushing the frontiers of space exploration while also guiding the next generation of explorers,” Ponce said in a 2020 article published by the JPL Education Office. “They are an essential part of the career pipeline for future innovators who will inspire and enable JPL missions and science.”

That pipeline is not abstract. JPL’s “Early Career Hire” program has drawn directly from its intern pool. Lala Pashian, a Cal Poly Pomona graduate who interned at JPL, was hired full time by the lab. “The day I received the news, I couldn’t believe it,” Pashian said in a 2014 JPL Education Office article. “I was like, ‘This is a dream!'”

JPL has historically hosted approximately 1,000 interns annually, according to a 2020 report by the JPL Education Office, with about 500 mentors guiding students on projects that span the STEM spectrum — from Mars rover engineering to Jupiter storm analysis. The internship programs are managed by the JPL Education Office, extending the reach of NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement.

The enrichment calendar for 2026 SURF@JPL fellows includes weekly seminars led by Caltech faculty and JPL researchers, a professional development series, writing workshops, field trips, and weekly small-group dinners with faculty, according to Caltech’s SFP website.

Caltech, the private research university at 1200 East California Boulevard in Pasadena that has managed JPL since 1958, reports that nearly 90 percent of its students participate in at least one research project before graduating. The SURF program, described by the university as one of its “crown jewels,” has operated for more than 45 years.

Glenn Orton, a JPL planetary scientist who has mentored more than 200 interns since 1985, keeps a list of their names pinned to his office wall — 10 single-spaced sheets — in case any of them calls for a reference. “Often, you get to be the first person in the world who will know about something,” Orton said of the work his interns undertake, according to the 2020 JPL Education Office article.

The summer will end in August. The interns will go home. Some will come back.