Space Museum

On Sunday my husband had the day off and we decided to take the children to the Leicester National Space Center for the day. We had planned to go earlier in our studies but hubby's work interfered with our plans. Better late than never as the saying goes. We had a great time and I was so happy to see the kids answering the questions on the exhibits accurately. This is a great hands on museum and we spent nearly 5 hours there before limping exhausted to the car:).
I took so many pictures that is was hard to narrow them down for this post.

The museum was broken down in to sections and the first part was "How to Be an Astronaut!".


Testing reaction time to see if you can handle space emergencies quickly enough.





Do you suffer from space sickness. Both kids felt dizzy after doing this!










A Russian space suit.

Could you sit like this for up to 6 hours. I am not sure my knees could stand it!








An astronaut's sleeping quarters. A British astronaut who spent 4 months on the international space station donated everything here including pictures of family and drawings his children made for him. There you can see the way he would sleep attached to the wall.








The potty. We read that astronauts are videotaped during training to help improve their aim to diminish contamination. My question is does the wife on earth notice a marked improvement of accuracy once the astronaut is home. If so can I sign up my son, please:)!








Next was the planets and space travel section of the museum.

Copy of the gold record sent on Voyager. The kids and I have seen pictures of this in the books we have read.










but this one we have never seen and it was interesting!

This message was sent on another space craft, the note attached said most humans can not tell what it means. The kids and I quizzed my husband who always seems to know these things. He got 4 out of the seven correct. I was impressed as I hadn't a clue what most were. I wonder if any aliens would ever be able to figure this out should it reach them.






I thought this was a great hands on activity and wished I had thought of something like this for home. Each can of beans was weighted as if it was on a planet. The kids could then try to lift up each can and feel the difference in the can weight depending on the amount of gravity on the planet. Since we talk about this at home it was a great activity to reinforce this.

The next Mars Rover to go into space in the year 2013 built by the UK

Kids practicing maneuvering a rover. We did something similar at home with our electric snap on rover.







Next section was working in space.

Operating a space craft control chair












How high you could jump in space.








Trying to land the lunar module without crashing on the moon.







Getting a feel for how astronauts used space equipment.










The last section of the museum was what was it like to live during this period. The kids thought the 70's looking living room was really weird and the black and white TV did not win them over:). I am getting old, I remember TV looking like that when I was a kid.










We also watched 2 planetarium shows and a rode in a space simulator. Great time was had by all.

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