NASA staff members visit Fiske Planetarium
NASA’s exhibit, “Vision for Space Exploration Experience,” across from Fiske Planetarium, Sept. 5 through Sept. 7, was not actually like being in outer space.
The traveling NASA exhibit did have one interesting gizmo; a contact-free sensor which allowed users to select video clips about NASA missions from a screen or project items like moon rocks, Mars rocks or NASA logos.
Without physically touching anything, the sensor detects foot or arm movement and responds.
Visitors got the opportunity to touch an extremely smooth four billion year-old moon rock, from almost 250,000 miles away from Earth.
The two-part tour lasted about 10 minutes. The first part was a brief introduction about current NASA projects and NASA’s for future exploration of the universe; the second part of the tour was the simulated and interactive view of Earth’s moon and Mars’ surface using the contact-free sensor.
The tour was free to visitors, open to the public and was led by NASA staff members.
Keyke Reed, 32, outreach coordinator for NASA and tour guide for the exhibit, says NASA does these tours “To get the word out, and to keep people interested. kids are the ones taking us to Mars.”
The exhibit tries to reach three locations in each state. By the end of 2007, the exhibit will have been to schools, festivals and museums in 18 states.
When NASA announced the exhibit would be coming to Colorado, Suzanne Traub-Metlay, 42, education program coordinator at Fiske Planetarium, said, “We were very excited to have NASA coming, we jumped on the opportunity.”
NASA is using the exhibit to get people interested in NASA spin-off inventions.
NASA spin-offs are new technologies people use everyday. Cell phones, satellite television, cordless tools, Tang and mattresses are examples of technologies people use everyday but were originally designed for use in space.
Andrew Sheskier, 19, a sophomore physics engineering major, said he enjoyed the tour.
“It was nice and pretty awesome,” Sheskier said.
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Zach Keller at john.keller@colorado.edu
