Europe Gains Faster Internet Access to JPL Images

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE

JET PROPULSION LABORATORY

CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011

Contact: Nancy Lovato (818) 354-0474

INTERNET ADVISORY

A mirror site across the Atlantic is giving faster access to
a wealth of images from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL),
Pasadena, Calif. Photos from spacecraft traveling the solar
system provide a visual feast of planets, moons, comets,
asteroids and spacecraft for online viewers.

The site, mirrored at Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und
Raumfahrt (DLR) in Germany, is the first European site for JPL’s
Planetary Photojournal. Thousands of images taken from current
spacecraft and from past missions are available. The new URL is
http://photojournal.dlr.de

While Internet speed and access have increased greatly
during the past few years, peak period download times could be
slower for some users. “By using this mirror site, we’ll be able
to give our friends on the Continent much faster access to public
releases from JPL’s flight missions,” said Myche McAuley, JPL
systems engineer.

DLR’s expertise and resources enabled them to offer to host
a mirror site for the Photojournal. Wilfried Tost and Jens
Schleusener, DLR systems engineers, and McAuley at JPL
facilitated the technical details of setting up the mirror site.

“The Photojournal was designed to provide users with easy
access to the best of the best images from NASA’s Earth and
planetary missions,” said Sue LaVoie, manager of Planetary Data
System Imaging Node at JPL. The JPL site, at URL
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov , serves about 1.75 million
pages per month, which equates to about 4.5 million hits per
month. The site opened in 1995. Mirror sites are automatically
updated when changes are made.

JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.

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