The new IMAX film 'Hubble 3D,' which opens across the US on Friday, March 19, records the 2009 trip that the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis made to the International Space Station, with the aim of repairing and modifying the Hubble Space Telescope, 350 miles above the Earth.

The 43-minute-long film, released by IMAX and Warner Brothers Pictures, and produced and directed by Toni Myers; is essentially a narrative voiced by Leonardo DiCaprio - with the Atlantis crew-members being the virtual 'camera operators' for the recording, thanks to the 700-pound Imax 3-D fastened into the cargo bay.

The picturesque images of the space appear all the more breathtakingly beautiful given the fact that the camera ran out every 8-1/2 minutes of footage - and, as such, the astronauts had to plan every moment that they captured on film, which practically had to be timed to the second!

The 'Hubble 3d' unfolds the painstaking training undergone by the spacewalking astronauts; the Atlantis flight; and the actual spacewalk made by the crew for carrying out the requisite repairs on the telescope; along with the 3-D excursions through the effervescent images of various solar systems and galaxies - the pictures that Hubble has been capturing for nearly two decades.

With mission specialist Michael J. Massimino noting that "a minute of that film is pretty precious;" Myers opines that "the treasure-trove of pictures that Hubble has sent back" are the key aspect of the film.