Hasta La Gadget!

Astronaut Andrew Feustel spacewalks to perform repairs on the Hubble; click to enlarge.

Take a number of the Hubble Space Telescope’s most stunning images, give them a 3D look, and display them on an IMAX screen–what’s not to love? Yet Hubble 3D, an IMAX and Warner Brothers film made in cooperation with NASA, manages to go far beyond that.

Much of the film focuses on last May’s mission of the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-125) to repair the Hubble. The astronauts brought an IMAX 3D camera with which they were able to capture spectacular sequences of the grueling and dangerous spacewalks the crew undertook to conduct the repairs. Coupled with stunning views of Earth, this section of Hubble 3D provides an immersive experience that astronauts who have seen the video have termed the closest thing yet to actually being in orbit. Hubble 3D will open in selected IMAX theaters March 19, but we were fortunate enough to get a preview this week.

The movie, narrated by Leonardo Dicaprio, opens with the STS-125 crew suiting up and talking about the importance of the mission and their growing excitement about it in the hours before liftoff. Among them is Mike Massimino (@Astro_Mike), who on that mission became the first astronaut to tweet from space. The film cuts away to a history of Hubble and a tour of its images (some of which you’ll find after the jump) but always returns to the saga of the repair mission.