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The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (or simply Applied Physics Laboratory, or APL) is a not-for-profit university-affiliated research center (UARC) in Howard County, Maryland. It is affiliated with Johns Hopkins University and employs 8,700 people as of 2024.[2] APL is the nation's largest UARC.[3]
The lab serves as a technical resource for the Department of Defense, NASA, and other government agencies. APL has developed numerous systems and technologies in the areas of air and missile defense, surface and undersea naval warfare, computer security, and space science and spacecraft construction.[4] While APL provides research and engineering services to the government, it is not a traditional defense contractor, as it is a UARC and a division of Johns Hopkins University. APL is a scientific and engineering research and development division, rather than an academic division, of Johns Hopkins.
Hopkins' Whiting School of Engineering offers part-time graduate programs for Lab staff members through its Engineering for Professionals program. Courses are taught at seven locations in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area, including the APL Education Center.[5]
APL was created in 1942 during World War II under the Office of Scientific Research and Development's Section T[6] as part of the Government's effort to mobilize the nation's science and engineering expertise within its universities. Its founding director was Merle Anthony Tuve, who led Section T throughout the war. Section T was created on August 17, 1940.[7] According to the official history[8] of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Scientists Against Time, APL was the name of Section T's main laboratory from 1942 onward, not the name of the organization overall.[9] Section T's Applied Physics Laboratory succeeded in developing the variable-time proximity fuze[10] that played a significant role in the Allied victory.[11] In response to the fuze's success, the APL created the MK 57 gun director in 1944. Pleased with the APL's work, the Navy then tasked it with the mission to find a way to negate guided missile threats. From there on, the APL became very involved in wartime research.[12] Expected to disband at the end of the war, APL instead became heavily involved in the development of guided missile technology for the Navy. At governmental request, the University continued to maintain the laboratory as a public service.
APL was originally located in Silver Spring, Maryland in a used-car garage[13] at the Wolfe Building at 8621 Georgia Avenue.[14][15] APL began moving to Laurel in 1954, with the construction of a two million dollar building and a $700,000 wing expansion in 1956.[16] The final staff transitioned to the new facility in 1975.[13][17] Before moving to Laurel, APL also maintained the "Forest Grove Station," north of Silver Spring on Georgia Avenue near today's Forest Glen Metro,[18] which included a hypersonic wind tunnel. The Forest Grove Station was vacated and torn down in 1963 and flight simulations were moved to Laurel. In the 1960s, APL built a mobile automaton called the Johns Hopkins Beast.
The Laboratory's name comes from its origins in World War II, but APL's major strengths are systems engineering and technology application. More than three-quarters of the staff are technical professionals, and 25% have computer science and math degrees. APL conducts programs in fundamental and applied research; exploratory and advanced development; test and evaluation; and systems engineering and integration.
The modern Applied Physics Laboratory is located in Laurel, Maryland, and spans 461 acres with more than 30 buildings on site. Additional auxiliary campuses exist in the surrounding areas.[19] The campus includes multiple innovation and collaboration spaces as well as labs and test facilities.[20]
In 2021, APL opened an interdisciplinary research center, known as Building 201, with 263,000 square feet of space, a 200-person auditorium and more than 90,000 square feet of specialized laboratory space.[3] The building also includes a four-story atrium, a STEM Center and a combination of 100 huddle, conference and auditorium breakout rooms.[21]
APL hired its first full-time sustainability manager in 2022.[22]
APL is also home to a Johns Hopkins graduate program in engineering and applied sciences, called Engineering for Professionals.[23] Courses are taught at seven locations in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area, including the APL Education Center.[5]
APL's STEM includes several internships and programs, including the Maryland MESA program, which is an after-school program for students in grades 3-12; APL STEM in the Community, which focuses on STEM community outreach; the STEM Academy, which is an after-school course program for middle and high school students (grades 8-12); and APL's Student Program to Inspire, Relate and Enrich (ASPIRE), which allows high school juniors and seniors to experience and explore STEM careers before college.[24][25]
As of APL's 80th anniversary in 2022, there were hundreds of projects spanning the lab's 12 mission areas that focus on solving complex research, engineering and analytical problems that present critical challenges to the United States.[26] Projects span from those in APL's more traditional areas of work, including air and missile defense, undersea warfare, to newer projects such as homeland security, artificial intelligence and cyber operations.[12]
APL is a University Affiliated Research Center whose primary sponsor is the U.S. Navy.[27] The Laboratory conducts work for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Missile Defense Agency,[28] the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA),[29] the Department of Homeland Security,[30] and elements of the U.S. intelligence community.[31] (For APL’s civil space work, see §Space.)
Since World War II, APL has contributed to U.S. air and missile defense and related national-security missions. Early work included the radar proximity fuze program,[32][33] followed by long-standing technical roles supporting the Navy’s Standard Missile family and associated test and evaluation facilities.[34] APL personnel have also been contributors to the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability sensor-netting system.[35]
APL’s subsequent work has focused on integrated air and missile defense, where the laboratory has served as a technical advisor on the Aegis Combat System and the Standard Missile family, including independent assessment and systems engineering support and operation of Navy facilities for guidance and systems evaluation.[36][37]
In February 2008, during Operation Burnt Frost, a modified SM-3 was used to intercept a failing U.S. satellite. APL reports and official briefings describe rapid engineering support to adapt Aegis BMD for the mission, a notable example of APL’s role in sea-based ballistic missile defense.[38][39]
Beyond air and missile defense, APL conducts undersea warfare research and development, including work on towed-array surveillance systems and undersea sensing and operations.[40][41] The Laboratory also hosts technical exchanges such as the Naval Submarine League’s annual Submarine Technology Symposium at its Kossiakoff Center.[42][43]
APL has built and operated many NASA spacecraft, including NEAR Shoemaker; ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer); TIMED; CONTOUR; MESSENGER; STEREO (A & B); Van Allen Probes; New Horizons; Parker Solar Probe; the DART planetary-defense mission; and the IMAP heliophysics mission. APL has also provided major systems and instruments for other NASA efforts, including EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer), Lunar Vertex, and hardware/instruments for Europa Clipper.[44][45][46][47][48][49]
APL’s space work began in the late 1950s/early 1960s with Navy-sponsored satellites such as the Transit navigation system and later Geosat. In the early 1990s, NASA established the Discovery Program for competitively selected, cost-capped, principal-investigator-led planetary missions; APL built NEAR Shoemaker, the program’s first mission, and later developed MESSENGER, the first Mercury orbiter.[50][51][52] In November 2021, APL’s DART spacecraft launched and on 26 September 2022 deliberately impacted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, measurably shortening its orbital period around Didymos by about 33 minutes—the first demonstration of kinetic asteroid deflection.[53]
APL’s space work is managed by the Space Exploration Sector (SES). The sector manages spacecraft integration high bays and cleanrooms; environmental test facilities (“shake and bake”), such as thermal-vacuum chambers and vibration tables; and a Multi-Mission Operations Center that can operate several spacecraft concurrently from pre-launch through end-of-mission.[54][55][56][57]
Ongoing and upcoming missions. In 2019, NASA selected the APL-proposed Dragonfly rotorcraft as the fourth New Frontiers mission, a relocatable lander designed to fly to multiple sites on Titan to study prebiotic chemistry and potential habitability.[58] APL also manages NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which on December 24, 2024, became the closest human-made object to the Sun, approaching to about 3.8 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) above the solar surface and matching that record again in 2025.[59][60] In heliophysics, APL is building and will operate Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), targeted to launch no earlier than September 2025, to map the boundary of the heliosphere and study the acceleration of energetic particles.[61][62]
The asteroid 132524 APL was named in honor of APL after a flyby by the New Horizons spacecraft.[63]
In 2014, APL made history with the successful use of the Modular Prosthetic Limb — a fully artificial articulated arm and hand — by a bilateral shoulder-level amputee. APL used pattern recognition algorithms to track which muscles were contracting and enable the prosthetics to move in conjunction with the amputee's body.[64]
Similar technology was used in 2016 for a demonstration in which a paralyzed man was able to "fist-bump" Barack Obama using signals sent from an implanted brain chip.[65] The limb returned sensory feedback from the arm to the wearer's brain. In 2023, APL announced that researchers have developed one of the world's smallest, most intense and fastest refrigeration devices, the wearable thin-film thermoelectric cooler (TFTEC), and teamed with neuroscientists to help amputees perceive a sense of temperature with their phantom limbs.[66] The technology won an R&D 100 award in 2023.[67]
APL researches and produces unmanned aerial vehicles for the US military.[68] One of its most recent projects is an unmanned aerial swarm that can be controlled by a single operator on the ground.[69]
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Boeing and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) have demonstrated that an operator on the ground, using only a laptop and a military radio, can command an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) "swarm". Despite limited flight training, the operator was able to connect with autonomous UAVs, task them and obtain information without using a ground control station. [...] The demonstrations are conducted under a collaborative agreement between Boeing and JHU/APL, a University Affiliated Research Center and a division of Johns Hopkins University that has been addressing critical national challenges through the innovative application of science and technology for nearly 70 years. It maintains a staff of about 5,000 on its Laurel, Maryland, campus.
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