The Kennedy Space Center has officially opened its “Destination: Mars” exhibit to the public.
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In the virtual world, Aldrin and Erisa Hines, who drives the real-life rover from JPL, guide viewers through the Martian landscape.
The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida has evolved a great deal since just being a few displays on card tables in the 1960s.
The “mixed reality” project merges virtual elements with the actual environment to create an interactive experience.
For the next three summers, high school students from Muscogee County and across the nation will spend two weeks as young aerospace engineers in Columbus at the Space Science Center crafting Mars rovers and helicopters using 3-D printing technologies. Attendees can also experience The Journey to Mars: Explorers Wanted module, an adventure that shows current happenings at NASA in a large theater. “To walk through the exact landscape that Curiosity is roving across puts its achievements and discoveries into lovely context”, Doug Ellison, a visualization producer at NASA’s JPL, said in a statement released in March.
The team behind the innovative experience, along with Buzz Aldrin, hope this new project will give the next generation the drive to pursue a career in space exploration. Of course, the timed experience has daily limited availability on a first come first served basis and only runs from 9:30 am to 5 pm, with no advance reservations.
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This week, the Senate Commerce Committee will adopt a bipartisan-backed $19.5 billion authorization package for NASA that would safeguard the Mars mission program from any budget changes the next president might seek to make.
