When the Neil Armstrong Space Exploration Gallery, presented by the Harold C. Schott Foundation, first opened in May 2019 at Cincinnati Museum Center, plans were already underway for an expansion.
“We knew it would take time to do everything we wanted to do,” says Dave Duszynski, president of Mercury Museum Services, a subsidiary of Cincinnati Museum Center. “We also knew that we really wanted to get the gallery open in time for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 celebration.”
The initial phase of the 6,000-square-foot gallery focused on the historic Apollo 11 mission, along with celebrating Armstrong, a prominent member of the Cincinnati community who taught classes at the University of Cincinnati and served on the Board of Trustees at Cincinnati Museum Center. On display at the Neil Armstrong Space Exploration Gallery is the moon rock that Armstrong brought back from the Apollo 11 mission, which he affectionately named “Bok the Rock.” In addition, on loan from the Smithsonian are Armstrong’s communications cap and flight jacket, as well as a replica of his iconic spacesuit.
The expansion goes beyond looking back and turns toward the future of space exploration and the excitement of astronomical observation. Whitney Owens, the chief learning officer for Cincinnati Museum Center, calls the expansion “a great blend of science and history.” While Phase One of the gallery paid homage to the space program and Armstrong, Phase Two focuses on the science behind astronomy as well as new engineering challenges regarding how we can get back to the moon, to Mars and beyond. They’ve added a new program in the Galaxy Theater that follows humans’ fascination for life on Mars over the past 40-50 years. The expansion also delves into asking how we can use some of the unique scientific capabilities of being in space to look back at the Earth and think more about climate change and the future of our planet.
The expansion, which opened in late August, is split into three sections: Explore, Protect and Imagine. The highly interactive Explore, designed pre-pandemic, had to be reimagined somewhat in order to minimize touching and maximize social distancing. In this section, visitors get the opportunity to look at beautiful space imagery from the Hubble telescope to see how the wavelengths of light alter the image.
“We can see certain wavelengths with the naked eye and use telescopes and other technologies that can help us see X-ray or infrared wavelengths, for instance,” says Owens. “You can look at a series of images and see what happens when you dial up or dial down different wavelengths.”
Another area invites guests to play around with making craters on the surface of the Moon — thinking about how the craters were made and what we can learn from them now. Other interactives put folks in the shoes of an astronaut, a space scientist or a mission planner. As guests choose from three different missions — getting a person to the moon, to Mars, or supplies to the International Space Station — they have to consider which personnel to use for the mission as well as what kinds of rockets, fuels and supplies are needed to accomplish the mission.
“Guests have to think like scientists and engineers in order to put together the right combination of team, power and equipment,” says Owens. Visitors also practice team-building skills as they try to communicate on two sides of a partition to solve certain tasks. Plus, they can dip their toes into computer programming by manipulating robotic rovers similar to those on Mars, navigating the Martian surface and relaying to scientists back on Earth information about the samples they’re collecting.
“From Earth orbit we can not only increase our communication skills and capabilities, but the satellites in Earth orbit both look outward and focus back down onto Earth,” says Duszynski.
The Protect area, he notes, examines all the ways that we can look back at the Earth and learn from the changing ocean currents, volcanic activity, glacier melt and changes in land use over time. “We can monitor all those things with the purpose of being able to understand the Earth enough to protect its future and make sure it’s here for the long run for us all.”
Though the museum staff is eager to generate excitement about the possibilities of doing things like colonizing Mars or other planets, they don’t want guests to lose sight of the fact that Earth is a special place that needs love.
“We call it a ‘Goldilocks’ planet in that it’s just right for human habitation,” says Owens. “We shouldn’t be so quick to explore some of those far-out possibilities that we lose sight of the importance of protecting the perfect resource.”
The Imagine section focuses on the wonder of looking up at the nighttime sky, which has both driven astronomy research as well as genuine wonder among the general public for centuries. Imagine looks at the whole concept of constellations and the idea that the stars are in a fixed location in the sky.
“We use the sky for several reasons,” says Duszynski. “Over the years, we’ve made patterns out of the stars in order to help us remember areas of the sky, but we’ve also made patterns to memorialize things in our daily lives, in our culture and in our religion.”
Imagine has an area for understanding gravity as well as a unique “stargazing” screen that projects phenomenal recent imagery that reflects current research in the sky.
“Space exploration and astronomy are team endeavors. It takes a lot of people with different skills working together to create this huge scientific achievement,” says Owens. “That’s what this exhibit is meant to do — to demonstrate that there’s a role for everyone to play. We hope people will be inspired when they visit.”
Cincinnati Museum Center is located at 1301 Western Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45203. For more information, call 513.287.7000 or visit cincymuseum.org.