WASHINGTON (States News Service) -- The Jet Propulsion Lab's missions for NASA are well known, such as the Mars Global Surveyor that recently showed that the red planet isn't stagnant, but changing and reforming with the strength of its weather. But the laboratory, which is an arm of the California Institute Technology, also does work apart from NASA.

Of the JPL's $1 billion annual budget, about $100 million goes to projects in the private, commercial sector (and to a few missions with the Department of Defense).

Commercialization of technologies developed and perfected with taxpayer money is a big part of what JPL does. However, 93 percent of the lab's income still comes from the space agency.

"We understand the tech base and get it out into the market," said Merle McKenzie, who manages the commercial technology arm of JPL. She said 160 different U.S. companies have used technology that JPL developed, but only 15 percent of the products relate to aerospace.

Private industry usually doesn't pay anything to use technology that JPL develops, apart from small licensing fees. But sometimes JPL has to do some work to adapt the technology to whatever that company needs. Those costs usually run between $20,000 and $50,000, but a fuel cell development project came in at $1.8 million.

When an outfit like JPL proposes a project, NASA now requires that the proposal talk about how the technology could apply to the private sector.

Examples of products that were born out of JPL endeavors range from chips that diagnose misfiring in Ford automobile engines to educational products. Also, robotic technology from Mars missions can now be found in robots that inspect hazardous waste sites and nuclear reactors. Images from JPL space missions pop up in classrooms around the country, so that students "can use the excitement of the space mission," McKenzie said.

The Defense Department's National Imaging and Mapping Agency will soon begin a joint venture with JPL when a Space Shuttle mission will carry a three-dimensional mapping device that will map 80 percent of the earth's surface.

"It offers the potential of mapping to a resolution that was unimagined," said Dr. William Spuck, manager of the defense and civil program of JPL. "It is the key joint venture right now."

Spuck said that most of the non-NASA work at JPL falls under "the reimbursable category," in which NASA will pay for work done for another agency, like the Department of Defense, and then that agency pays NASA back. That's because NASA's charter calls on it to help other government departments.

But there is a federal governmental rule that JPL cannot do more than 25 percent of its business with non-NASA entities. Spuck said that that level hasn't been reached since the 1980's. The majority of the lab's work remains with NASA missions, and there are many in the works right now.

"Probably the most exciting is Cassini," said Winston Gin, who began at JPL working on rockets in 1957. Cassini is a joint venture by NASA and the European Space Agency that is managed by JPL.

Launched in October 1997, the two-story tall spacecraft will explore Saturn and primarily its moon Titan. It will soon pass Earth in a scheduled fly-by, and should reach Saturn in 2004.

"It is the most complex outer planet spacecraft that was ever built," Gin said. It is also the last of the "big, flagship" missions before NASA went on to a better, cheaper, faster philosophy in the early 1990's, Gin said.

Three separate spacecraft will be examining Mars soon, and the Mars Global Surveyor is already there. The Mars Climate Orbiter will enter the planet's orbit September 23 to study Martian weather.

When the Mars Polar Lander touches down on the south pole in December, it will deploy two probes that will jut down into the Martian soil. At that point, the Climate Orbiter will become the communications link between the lander and earth.

The penetrators will try to detect water under the surface of Mars, which is a step further than what the Pathfinder rover did.

The south pole of Mars is thought to have once had water.

Deep Space I was a success, and still could continue to be, for JPL. The lab created the spacecraft to test 12 technologies, including auto-navigation and ion propulsion systems.

DS1 recently flew by an asteroid and "validated" all the new technologies, Gin said, even though an attempt at photographing the rock failed. And it is still going. Gin said that JPL is hoping for more money from NASA to fly the probe by a comet for pictures.

Another current mission is Stardust, which is part of the Discovery program of low-cost missions. Launched in February of this year, the spacecraft is scheduled to fly within 60 miles of the Wild-2 comet in 2004 to collect dust and other materials from its tail.

It will return to earth in 2006 and be recovered.