Related Exhibitions
Museum Celebrations of Apollo
The 40th anniversary of the moon landing has inspired a series of new space-themed exhibitions at many Boston-area institutions. A prominent part of the Giant Leaps exhibition are a pair of displays at the MIT Museum's Mark Epstein Innovation Gallery. "Giant Leaps: Inspiring the Next Generation" is a national traveling exhibition aimed at exciting secondary school students with an interest in aerospace engineering and space exploration. "MIT Goes to the Moon" will feature Apollo-era memorabilia and tell the story of the major contributions made by the Institute to the American space-program. Special public programs during the Giant Leaps event and throughout the summer will draw public attention to all aspects of this exciting field of research and discovery.
SPECIAL MIT MUSEUM PROGRAM: Join us on June 13 and 14 as scientists and engineers from the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics share the latest technologies being developed in their labs. Projects on display include the TALARIS Project -- a prototype robotic lunar lander helping MIT's efforts to win a $20 million race to the Moon (the Google Lunar X-Prize); SPHERES micro-satellites -- vehicles the size of volleyballs, used in automated docking and formation flight experiments on the International Space Station; Quadrotor UAVs -- Unmanned Aerial Vehicles programmed to fly surveillance missions and cooperate with each other in swarms; a high-tech NASA crash test dummy playing an important part in designing the Space Shuttle's successor; and the state of the art computer simulations visualising flow through heat exchangers.
The Museum of Science is planning to refurbish its existing collection of space-related artifacts and create new displays that tell the story of Apollo and beyond. The John F. Kennedy Library will open "Moon Shot – JFK and Space Exploration" on May 16. This exhibition will illustrate both the grand vision and the hard engineering that made the achievement of landing on the moon possible.
For the littlest space buffs, the Boston Children's Museum will open "Living in Space" on May 24.
The Boston Pops has invited the organizers of Giant Leaps to present a small display in the main corridor of Symphony Hall. Throughout the Pops 2009 season, visitors to this venerable concert hall will be treated to some original artifacts, information about the moon landing and aerospace engineering, and a wonderful collection of original materials documenting past Pops concerts and celebrations of space.
