IPAC Director's Update 2025

I was happy to start as the new Executive Director in late May of 2025, and I thank George Helou and the IPAC staff for making IPAC so valuable to the community and such a great place to work. The 2026 federal budget uncertainties have given us challenges, and I'm confident we are up to the task of making good progress nevertheless.

IPAC celebrated many successes over the past year. The SPHEREx NASA MIDEX mission launched and the Euclid Q1 data were released in March. SPHEREx has gone on to map the entire sky, over 20 TB of Euclid data were downloaded from the Euclid NASA Science Center at IPAC (ENSCI), and we operated the ZTF data system for another year in 2025. We also supported the release of the first Rubin Observatory images with our Firefly Science User Interface and Tools for the Rubin Science Platform. We are also developing science operations components and data reduction pipelines for the upcoming Roman Space Telescope (2026 launch) and NEO Surveyor (2027 launch) missions, all the while adding data and improving services of IRSA, NED, and NExScI.

IPAC performed mission operations for the Lunar Trailblazer, demonstrating our capability to perform spacecraft commanding and to incorporate students into every aspect of a NASA mission. Despite valiant efforts from the mission operations team and a worldwide community supporting spacecraft tracking and monitoring, a series of malfunctions aboard the spacecraft caused a loss of signal and the mission did not achieve its goals. 

We had significant staff transitions during 2025, saying goodbye to and welcoming numerous members of the IPAC family. Please see the companion article on staff changes for more information.

During 2025 IPAC scientists authored hundreds of publications, gave numerous talks, were principal or co-investigators on dozens of successful observing and grant proposals, performed significant community service (national committees and scientific reviewing), and mentored award-winning students. This work also supported the advancement of our projects as well as the overall astronomical enterprise, and we will continue vigorous research programs in relevant scientific areas into future. 

IPAC has had an incredible history and is positioned well to lead in future space science observatory operations, data processing, community support, science engagement, and archiving. We are also now 40 years old, and we plan to celebrate and commemorate this milestone with articles, events, and talks throughout 2026. Visit our booth at the January AAS meeting in Phoenix to learn more, and expect to see IPAC-related talks and activities at the June AAS meeting in Pasadena. Please join us in celebrating and working together to make advances in space science.