The Houston Space Centre is filled with awesome science and space activities, it is right next to NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
I tried to fit all the activities into the day, there are sooo many!
I went on the tram tour that took me to NASA’s mission control where missions from 1965 to 1992 were held.
The computers in the old mission control room are very old and during the 1960’s there were no personal calculators or mouses/keyboards so it was incredible what they used to send man to the moon.
They had very big screens and huge computers during that time that would take 5 people to operate and hold only 2MB of memory, so you could download Twitter on that computer and the computer would be exceeding the limit.
It is mind boggling how they achieved so much back then and how much more advanced we are today.
Upon returning to the space centre I went into a replica of the Sky Lab space station which was built from leftover hardware from the Apollo missions, it was redesigned to be used as space station.
I also saw Gene Cernan’s capsule used for his flight to the moon (he was the last man to be on the moon). I saw his presentation when he came to Perth a few months ago!
I met a physicist that worked for NASA, he had actually met first hand some of the astronauts and other scientists such as Wernher von Braun. He has retired and is now volunteering at the Space Centre. It was SO interesting talking to him, he was so full of information and took me around to show me things and told me some personal stories about the astronauts. Super interesting!!!
I moved onto the space sample vault.
The vault was full of rocks gathered on the moon and moon dust.
They also had many meteorites, including one that was available for everyone to touch.
I went to one of the movies that were on display, this movie showed the timeline of all the missions and people who flew to space.
I also saw the Orion mission building from the outside. It is where the next mission to Mars is being planned. Orion is the spacecraft which is being designed to take astronauts to Mars.
There was a huge display from Mythbusters. Showing the science and space experiments. It was really cool – it was hands on activities, which made it easier to understand.
Later on in the evening I went to see bats emerging from under a bridge near the heart of Houston.
I read that thousands come out at around sunset and it is a beautiful sight so I went to see them.
We waited a couple of hours in the burning heat and a couple walking past asked if we were here to see the bats. We started talking, it was so much fun to meet really nice people. Taylor is a teacher and she told me abit about their life.
I am really enjoying meeting people along the way.
When time came, a steady stream of thousands of bats flew from under the bridge.
It was unbelievable. SO many of them. A few hawks were swooping in and catching them. Many times they were successful, but there were thousands if not millions of bats. They formed a cloud in the sky.
I am attaching photos that I got from the internet of the bats because we took 100’s of photos but there was not enough light and they did not come out very good. Also photos of Taylor and Peter (the really nice people I met)!
Hi Dean! Taylor and I had such fun meeting and hanging out with you and your family while watching the bats. Have a blast at space camp this summer and say hello to your family for us when you see them next – Peter