Participants learn about how some rockets carry science tools—not scientists—into space, and how a special kind of rocket called “sounding rockets” can be used for quick, low-flying scientific missions into space. Participants will build and launch their own air rockets to help imagine the challenges and triumphs of engineering spacecraft and launching them into a specific region of the space above our planet.

This hands-on activity will have visitors make a scale model of the distances between objects in our solar system. They learn that there is a lot of space between planets, and that our solar neighborhood contains many other interesting features and objects. They can even imagine where they might like to send a NASA mission spacecraft in the future!