Space Attractions Down To Earth In California


Space Shuttle Endeavor
arrives at the California Science Center soon and space exploration is on the minds of local and visiting space travel fans. Visitors to Los Angeles can see a variety of historical and futuristic space exhibitions and attractions within driving distance from LAX. California residents and visitors alike are rediscovering the state’s rich space-oriented past along with current places of interest that are helping charge the U.S. space program of tomorrow.

Let’s take a look at what California has to offer travelers interested in space-themed points of interest:

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) (Pasadena) has played a major role in U.S. space exploration achievements and offers free two-hour tours of its Pasadena facility. Right now, NASA’s Mars Curiosity team is performing robotic arm tests in preparation for the rover to touch and examine its first Martian rock.

Griffith Observatory
(Los Angeles) reopened in 2007 after a four-year, $93 million renovation. The 9,000-pound Zeiss Telescope can accommodate as many as 600 viewings per night, giving visitors an unmatched view of the moon and stars on a clear Los Angeles night.

Columbia Memorial Space Center (Downey) is the national memorial for the Space Shuttle Columbia’s seven crew members, lost in 2003 but also a hands-on learning center, dedicated to bringing the wonder and excitement of space science to children of all ages.

Discovery Museum Science & Space Center (Sacramento) is home to the Challenger Learning Center and houses an animal discovery room, nature trails, wildlife pond and Sacramento’s only public planetarium. Weekend activities include animal presentations for all ages, make and take crafts, and planetarium shows.Kidspace Children’s Museum (Pasadena) has more than two-dozen interactive exhibits designed for children from ages 1 to 10. At the Museum’s Gavin Physics Forest, kids can learn first hand about what it takes to get an object into space by creating mini-bottle rockets and study gravitational acceleration with the Ball Bounce exhibit.

Space Mountain– No list of California space attractions would be complete without Disneyland’s Space Mountain, the high-speed thrill ride that has hurtled visitors into the final fun frontier since 1977.


Flickr photo by Lance Cheung

Space Travel Robots Take Tiny Steps Toward Future

Still fascinated by space travel, Americans can’t seem to get enough of the romantic side of it all. But in the day-to-day business of space exploration, scientists and those who make a living in space have little time to be sentimental. NASA planning and implementation people are looking to get there in a realistic, cost-conscious way, one step at a time.

“Space and space exploration have always been romanticized. I think this is because space is inherently impossible for most everyone to get to, and because space is so far away, we wonder what it’s like,” said Patrick Pattamanuch, Materials and Processes Engineer, Boeing Satellite Systems on future-thinking Curiosity.com.

NASA’s Mars Program Planning Group, the people charged with developing a new strategy for exploration of Mars, is looking at future robotic missions that can help meet a call for sending humans to Mars in the 2030s.

“We’re moving quickly to develop options for future Mars exploration missions and pathways,” said five-time space shuttle astronaut John Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist in a NASA news release.

NASA’s robots are actually a work in progress now, being tested to re-fuel satellites.

A challenge that engineering teams face when designing satellites is how much fuel they can carry to operate throughout their lifetime. NASA hopes to refuel satellites rather than letting them become space debris.

Significant results from work being conducted in on-orbit robotics servicing will position Canadian and American exploration missions to come, but will also open doors for commercial applications driven by industry.Coming up in August, NASA will land the robotic Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity on the planet’s surface. This roving science laboratory will assess whether Mars is or was able to support life. Next year, NASA will launch the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter to help assess the Martian upper atmosphere.

NASA’s strategy is focused on maintaining America’s critical technical skills and to achieve the highest priority science and exploration objectives, now with far less funding and more cuts on the way in 2013 as we see in this video.

[Flickr photo via Flying Jenny]