In February 1942, there were only a few small buildings and rocket motor test pits on Jet Propulsion Laboratory's present site. George Emerson took this photograph from the hill above what is now the east gate. JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology and is NASA's lead center for robotic exploration of the solar system. In addition to supervising robotic spacecraft and observing far-off galaxies in the universe, JPL is in charge of the Deep Space Network, which communicates with spacecraft and conducts scientific investigations from its complexes in California's Mojave Desert near Goldstone; near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra, Australia. JPL is located in Pasadena, California about twelve miles northeast of Los Angeles.