NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will unlock its gates for a rare free public open house next month after a three-year closure.
The Pasadena, California facility, one of Los Angeles County’s most closely guarded landmarks, will host its Explore JPL event on Oct. 10–11, marking the research center’s 90th anniversary since its founding in 1936. Admission costs nothing, though tickets vanished within hours of the announcement when they first became available.
Organizers have reassured hopeful visitors that additional spots will surface as cancellations roll in, and they advise checking back periodically for released inventory.
The tour grants access to the Space Flight Operations Facility, a historic mission control hub that has tracked major endeavors including Mariner, Viking, Voyager and Mars 2020. Attendees can examine robotics innovations such as lunar explorers and search-and-rescue rovers, browse themed exhibitions on landmark American space missions, and observe work inside the Microdevices Laboratory where staff develop what the facility describes as “miniature technologies shaping the future of exploration.”
Full-scale models of the Perseverance Mars rover and the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft will also be on display.
JPL built and launched Explorer 1, the first successful U.S. Artificial satellite in 1958, designed and operated the Mars Exploration Rovers, and currently manages NASA’s deep space network, an international array of radio antennas supporting interplanetary communications.
The laboratory has also drawn unsettling attention for a cluster of deaths and disappearances among its scientific personnel. Astrophysicist Carl Grillmair was killed on his rural Southern California home’s front porch in February. Former Materials Processing Group director Monica Reza vanished during a June 2024 hike in Angeles National Forest and has not been found. Scientist Frank Maiwald died in July 2024 without explanation, and Michael Hicks, a Deep Space 1 Mission veteran who worked at JPL from 1998 to 2022, died in July 2023 at 59.
The federal government announced a probe into the pattern earlier this year. Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker said in April that the cases warranted scrutiny.
“You can say these are all suspicious, and these are scientists who have worked in critical technology,” Swecker said. He pointed toward possible foreign intelligence involvement: “China, Russia, even some of our friends — Pakistan, India, Iran, North Korea — they target this type of technology.”
The open house runs Oct. 10–11 in Pasadena.