Gallery: JPL in Popular Culture

Over the years, JPL and its historic missions have influenced – and, in some cases, been influenced by – numerous cultural touchstones, from “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” to the Rolling Stones and Pixar films. Here’s a curated selection of JPL’s pop-culture connections.

The team behind “Project Hail Mary” reached out to NASA as they worked to bring author Andy Weir’s novel to the big screen. Actors Ryan Gosling and Sandra Hüller, directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, screenwriter Drew Goddard, and Weir visited NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to talk about their experience making the movie and the collaboration between scientists and creative media.

Also joining the discussion was NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren who, during filming, shared insights with Gosling on the awesome (and tough) realities of human spaceflight, like adjusting to microgravity.

When fictional astronaut Mark Watney becomes stranded alone on the Red Planet in the novel and film “The Martian,” people and technology from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory play important roles in his castaway adventure. Built and designed by JPL, the Mars Pathfinder lander figures prominently in Watney’s ability to communicate with Earth and survive his long ordeal. Pathfinder landed on Mars in 1997 and operated for about three months.

The Rolling Stones – Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood – were delighted when they learned that the JPL team behind NASA’s InSight lander had nicknamed a Martian rock after the band. A little larger than a golf ball, “Rolling Stones Rock” appeared to have rolled about 3 feet (1 meter), propelled by InSight’s thrusters as the spacecraft touched down on Nov. 26, 2018, to study Mars’ deep interior. Actor Robert Downey Jr. announced the rock’s naming Aug. 22, 2019, at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl Stadium before the band took the stage. Backstage, prior to making the announcement, Downey said, “Cross-pollinating science and a legendary rock band is always a good thing ...”

NASA’s twin Voyager probes, built and managed by JPL, have been featured in many movies, TV shows, and songs over the course of their epic 45-plus-year journeys through our solar system.

Perhaps the most widely recognized pop culture Voyager homage is in the 1979 film “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.” In it, a machine called V’Ger – the fictional Voyager 6 spacecraft, its intelligence greatly enhanced by an alien race – seeks to return to Earth, a homecoming that would wreak havoc on our planet in the process. In real life, JPL’s John Casani, who was the Voyager project manager, offered to loan a Voyager model to “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry. Although the mission’s spacecraft design was altered in the movie, its inspiration shone through.

In “The Lizard-Spock Expansion,” episode eight from season two of the American television sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” engineer Howard Wolowitz accidentally gets a Mars rover stuck in a ditch while driving it remotely at JPL in an effort to impress Dr. Stephanie Barnett. Both of the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, were active on the Red Planet when the episode aired on Nov. 17, 2008. Along with managing those twin rovers until their missions ended, JPL currently manages the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars.

A real planet in our galaxy discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission reminded scientists so much of Luke Skywalker’s home planet in “Star Wars” that they nicknamed it “Tatooine.” Officially called Kepler-16b, the Saturn-size planet is about 200 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The reality of its two suns was so startling, George Lucas himself agreed to the astronomers’ nickname for the planet. JPL managed Kepler mission development for NASA.

BB-8, the droid that moves like a rotating ball in the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy, visited JPL with representatives from Walt Disney Studios to meet some new robot friends on Sept. 22, 2016. Tour stops included the Mars Yard and mission control. Along the way, BB-8 had interactions with JPL’s RoboSimian, Mars rover doubles, and other robot prototypes in development at the Lab.

In 2018, NASA launched the first interplanetary CubeSats – a pair of briefcase-size spacecraft called Mars Cube One, or MarCO – on the same rocket as the agency’s InSight lander. Mission members nicknamed the pair EVE and WALL-E after characters from Pixar’s “WALL-E” movie. Carrying their own communications and navigation experiments, MarCO flew independently to the Red Planet, even receiving transmissions from InSight during entry, descent, and landing. In a further JPL connection, the Pixar creative team behind “WALL-E” paid a visit to the lab during the film’s development to get inspiration for their robotic characters by learning about the capabilities of real space robots.

Missions built or managed by JPL have inspired a number of popular toy tie-ins, such as the Mattel Inc. Hot Wheels JPL Sojourner Mars Rover Action Pack Set. Other sets have included the Jupiter/Europa Encounter Action Pack, which features a detailed reproduction of the Galileo spacecraft, and Hot Wheels versions of the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. The LEGO Group has also released a Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter kit, one of many NASA-themed building kits the company has released.