Tickets to ‘Explore JPL’ sell out at light speed
After hearing that Jet Propulsion Laboratory was foregoing its annual open house in favor of online pre-registration that would give visitors a “Ticket to Explore JPL,” thousands of space fans set their watches for April 25 at 9 a.m.
That was the precise moment when 30,000 free tickets became available to the public at-large, in increments up to five tickets per registrant, for the two-day event beginning June 4.
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Online visitors were able to select an estimated arrival time to help prevent the clogging of parking lots and city streets in La Cañada — a common sight in recent years, when the extravaganza drew upward of 45,000 visitors and forced the facility to turn people away.
Even with some galactic website slow-downs, JPL officials reported Monday it took about one hour and 45 minutes for the cache of tickets to be completed exhausted.
“We were monitoring the page and seeing how it was going. There was a huge number of people trying to get in at the same time,” said Veronica McGregor, JPL’s manager of news and social media.
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To help ease the pain of those who were unable to successfully navigate the online registration system before all the tickets disappeared, JPL has opened up spaces on its free public tour schedule to accommodate an additional 100 visitors per day, from June 9 through Sept. 23, McGregor said.
Now 50 extra bookings can be made on both the morning and afternoon tour cycle. The daily tours won’t include all the outdoor demonstrations included in the “Ticket to Explore JPL” event, but visitors can still access the site’s von Karman Visitor Center, the Space Flight Operations Facility and the Spacecraft Assembly Facility.
“For anyone who was not able to get their ‘Ticket to Explore JPL,’ we encourage them to go back online and book one of these tours,” McGregor said.
More information on JPL’s free public tours can be found online at jpl.nasa.gov/events/tours, or by calling (818) 354-9314. Tours must be reserved three weeks in advance.
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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com
Twitter: @SaraCardine
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