The last time NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory invited the public inside, every ticket was gone before most people had finished their morning coffee.
That was 2023. Three years, four rounds of layoffs, a wildfire evacuation and a 90th birthday later, JPL is doing it again.
Explore JPL returns October 10 and 11, a free, two-day open house offering visitors a walk through mission control, spacecraft assembly bays and robotics labs at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains.
Free timed-entry tickets will be released at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, August 29, at jpl.nasa.gov/explore-jpl — and based on prior years, JPL expects them to be fully reserved within 10 to 15 minutes, according to the lab’s official event page.
The event is the first public open house at JPL since April 29–30, 2023, when all 36,000 available tickets were claimed, according to LAist. It is also the first fall open house since 2015. JPL, a federally funded research center managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, uses a Pasadena mailing address and has been identified with the city since the lab’s founding on October 31, 1936. Its physical campus sits in La Cañada Flintridge.
This year, visitors will explore four thematic areas: Missions That Changed the World, Moon to Mars, In Flight and Makerspace, according to JPL’s press release. The event features JPL’s Space Flight Operations Facility — mission control, a designated National Historic Landmark where engineers send commands to spacecraft billions of miles away. Visitors will also see the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, the JPL Machine Shop, robotics research including autonomous lunar rovers and search-and-rescue robots, the Microdevices Laboratory and full-scale models of the Perseverance Mars rover, Voyager and Galileo, the press release states.
The demand for tickets has a history. In 2014, a record 45,000 visitors overwhelmed parking and caused hours-long entrance lines during an unticketed open house, JPL reported. The following year drew similar crowds. JPL shifted to a timed-ticketing system in 2016 to manage crowd flow. That year, 30,000 free tickets were claimed almost immediately, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Michael Yu, a parent who attended the 2023 event with his teenage daughter, told LAist at the time that sharing his love of space and science with her was one of the reasons he wanted to have kids. Robotics engineer Ashley Stroupe, described by LAist as the first woman to drive a rover on Mars, demonstrated the Scarecrow practice rover at the same event, telling visitors that when the JPL team drives rovers on Mars, they know they are seeing exactly what they will encounter on the planet’s surface.
Each person may reserve up to five tickets. Names for all attendees must be entered at registration. Tickets are non-transferable and may not be sold; duplicate names result in automatic cancellation, according to JPL. Children under 2 do not need a ticket. Anyone 18 or older must present government-issued photo identification at the gate.
Visitors may not bring bags, backpacks, hard-sided coolers, weapons, glass containers, alcohol, pets other than certified service animals, banners, signs, professional camera equipment with detachable telephoto lenses or drones, according to the press release. Small purses and diaper bags are permitted. Parking is free.
The event’s return coincides with a turbulent period for the lab. JPL’s workforce has been reduced by approximately 25 percent since December 2023, according to SpacePolicyOnline, through four rounds of layoffs driven by funding shortfalls. The most recent round, in October 2025, cut 550 employees, according to a JPL workforce update. In January 2025, the Eaton Fire forced JPL to close and evacuate, though the facility sustained no fire damage, SpaceNews reported. And in May 2026, NASA announced it would open JPL’s management contract to competitive bidding for the first time, according to a NASA press release. Caltech’s current contract runs through September 30, 2028; the university has said it intends to bid, according to LAist.
Explore JPL takes place Saturday and Sunday, October 10–11, 2026, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. PDT each day at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive. Admission and parking are free, but timed-entry tickets are required and must be reserved in advance at jpl.nasa.gov/explore-jpl
The lab was founded 90 years ago this October in the Arroyo Seco, when a group of Caltech researchers fired a rocket motor in a dry riverbed not far from where spacecraft are assembled today.
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