Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. are ramping up for an era of unprecedented space exploration. The Lab is poised to launch and direct a fleet of space probes that will, among many other things, crash into the heart of a distant comet, snatch particles of the solar wind, rove across Mars to search for evidence of liquid water, and descend through the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan to explore what reminds many scientists of an early Earth.

"The world will have a front-row seat to one of the most exciting periods of solar system exploration in history," says Dr. Charles Elachi, JPL director. "Never before have so many exciting and challenging missions to study so many different parts of the solar system and beyond converged within such a short time frame. It's an exciting time for NASA, JPL, the nation and the world."

This summer's launch of two identical rovers to Mars within days of each other will have everyone seeing double on the red planet. In January of 2004, the two Mars Exploration Rovers will attempt to land on opposite sides of the planet and explore diverse, though equally intriguing sites for evidence of past and present liquid water - an ingredient thought vital to any life processes.

Among the advancing JPL fleet is the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, slated to launch at the end of this summer. This new space observatory will pierce the thick dust that blankets much of the universe and then provide spectacular views of some of the earliest galaxies and stars in cosmic history. The telescope's super-sensitive infrared vision will also look around nearby stars for swirling debris discs that may represent planetary systems in the making.

The veteran Galileo mission will come to a grand finale this fall when engineers deliberately plunge the spacecraft into Jupiter's vaporizing atmosphere in September. They're doing this to avoid any possibility of future contamination of Jupiter's scientifically interesting moon Europa.

In January of 2004, the Stardust space probe will encounter comet Wild 2 and snatch comet dust from this celestial wanderer for return to Earth in 2006. Scientists hope to learn more about the early history of our solar system from this cometary sample return.

Then in July of 2004, after a seven-year journey across the solar system, the Cassini spacecraft will be the first space probe to orbit the ringed planet Saturn. Just six months later, Cassini's Huygens probe will descend through the rich atmosphere of Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, a world with possible oceans of liquid methane and some conditions similar to primordial Earth.

The Genesis spacecraft is currently soaring beyond Earth's orbit, collecting particles of the solar wind. Such pristine samples from our Sun should help scientists understand more about its chemistry and how the material it ejects may affect us here on Earth. These solar samples will return to Earth in September 2004 with a dramatic mid-air scoop of the spacecraft's sample return capsule by helicopters over the Utah Test and Training Range. This is NASA's first sample return mission since the Apollo Moon landings wrapped in the early seventies.

Don't miss the extraterrestrial fireworks show on July 4, 2005, when the Deep Impact spacecraft will send a small probe to literally crash into the heart of Comet Tempel 1. The main spacecraft will observe this cosmic collision from a distance, then analyze the ejected material. In their series of encounters, JPL's robotic space probes may lead us to a string of scientific discoveries, some of which may forever change our views of the universe and our place in it.