National Space Centre
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The National Space Centre is one of the United Kingdom's leading visitor attractions devoted to space science and astronomy. It is located in the city of Leicester, England, next to the River Soar. The building was designed by Nicholas Grimshaw, and it opened to the public on 30 June 2001.
The centre arose from a partnership between the University of Leicester's Space Research Centre and local government agencies. The total construction cost was £52m, £26m of which came from a Millennium Commission grant, and the rest from private sector sponsors. It is run as an educational charity, and offers science workshops for school children of all ages.
The Beagle 2 Mars spacecraft was controlled from the centre's Landing Operations Control Centre.
The Centre has on display the only known Soyuz spacecraft in Europe (there is one at the Smithsonian Institution as part of the ASTP display).
It is closed on Mondays, except for Mondays which are bank holidays or in school holidays.
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[edit] Galleries and amenities
The centre has six main galleries:
- Into Space covers most space hardware, from the rockets that take probes and humans into space, to the specially packaged food humans can eat during their stay. The gallery also includes a life-size mock-up of the European Space Agency's International Space Station Columbus module.
- Exploring The Universe covers some of the most exotic space topics, from black holes to the age of the universe.
- The Planets gallery covers everything in our Solar System. It houses a real piece of Moon rock, brought back by the astronauts of the Apollo 17 mission, and a sizable Martian meteorite.
- Orbiting Earth tells the story of how humans use satellites to improve their daily lives — from telecommunication to forecasting the weather.
- Space Now is a live gallery that brings visitors "today's news from space". The gallery hosts live demonstrations, and the news desk provides visitors with an opportunity to ask any space-related questions that puzzle them. The gallery is accompanied by Space Now, a space news website.
- Tranquillity Base opened in July 2005, and allows visitors to experience what it would be like to live in a lunar base in the year 2025. Visitors train as astronauts working for AESA — the All Earth Space Agency.
There is also the Space Theatre: an immersive digital theatre and planetarium-style based on Digistar 3 technology.
The gift shop called Cargo Bay, and the restaurant at the base of the Rocket Tower is known as Boosters.
The National Space Centre hosts the UK Government's official Near-Earth object (NEO) Information Centre [1]. An exhibition about NEOs can be found in the centre's The Planets gallery, with sister exhibitions in the Natural History Museum in London, and Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh.
[edit] Events
Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, visited the Space Centre in June 2005. The first Star Wars Day was held on 30 July 2005. Due to the popularity of this event, Star Wars weekend was held on 12 November and 13 November 2005. The centre hosted a Doctor Who exhibition from 22 November 2005 to 8 January 2006. A Sci-Fi Weekend on the weekend beginning 17 June 2006 included a live-action experience similar to Alien War. On 19 July 2006 NASA astronaut Brian Duffy visited and told people about his trip to space.
