Virginia Air and Space Science Center facts for kids
 |
|
| Established | 1992 |
|---|---|
| Location | Hampton, Virginia |
| Type | Aerospace |
| Visitors | 345,000 |
The Virginia Air and Space Science Center is an exciting museum and learning place in Hampton, Virginia. It's also the official visitor center for NASA's Langley Research Center and Langley Air Force Base.
At the museum, you can explore amazing aircraft and spacecraft. There's even a huge IMAX digital theater to watch incredible films. During the summer, the center offers fun camps about flying and space for kids. One of the coolest things you'll see is the actual Apollo 12 spacecraft, called Yankee Clipper!
Contents
What You Can See at the Museum
The museum has a large, open area with three floors and a glass roof. You can walk around and see many exhibits. There's even a special walkway to look down at the airplanes hanging from the ceiling!
Volunteers at the museum run an amateur radio exhibit. Here, you can see old and new radio equipment. Sometimes, you can even use the radio to talk to real astronauts on the International Space Station!
Adventures in Flight Gallery
This part of the museum is all about how things fly. You can try out hands-on experiments to learn about airplane parts like wings and propellers. There are also flight simulators where you can pretend to fly a plane!
Many real aircraft hang from the ceiling in this gallery. Most of these planes have been restored. They were used for important flight research by NASA and the Air Force nearby.
Here are some of the cool aircraft you can see:
- A large McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 passenger plane. You can sit in the cockpit and passenger seats. You can even try a flight simulator inside the plane!
- A B-24D "Liberator" bomber. A film inside makes you feel like you're flying in it.
- A copy of the 1903 Wright Flyer, the first successful airplane.
- A Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor cockpit you can sit in.
- A Grumman A-6 Intruder nose section.
- A Bell P-39Q Airacobra fighter plane.
- A Convair F-106B Delta Dart interceptor.
- A McDonnell-Douglas F-4E Phantom II fighter jet.
- A Lockheed F-104C Starfighter jet.
- A General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon nose section.
- The F-18 High Alpha Research Vehicle "HARV."
- A Republic F-84F Thunderstreak fighter-bomber.
- A Grumman-American Yankee Aircraft.
- A Hawker Siddeley Kestrel XV-6A.
- A KITFOX Model 4 Speedster small plane.
- A Pershing II Missile.
- A Piper J-3 Cub light aircraft.
- A Pitts Special aerobatic biplane.
- A Rutan VariEze homebuilt aircraft.
- A Schleicher ASW 12 Glider.
- A Stearman N2S-3 Trainer.
- A UH-1M "Iroquois" Helicopter.
- A YF-16 "Fighting Falcon" prototype.
Space Gallery: Exploring the Cosmos
Your journey into space begins in a special room that feels like you're launching to Mars! You'll see how astronauts would travel to the Red Planet. Then, doors open into the main space gallery.
Here are some of the amazing space items you'll find:
- The real Apollo 12 Command Module Yankee Clipper. This spacecraft orbited the Moon 45 times in 1969!
- The Apollo Lunar Excursion Module Simulator (LEMS). Astronauts used this huge machine at Langley Research Center to practice landing on the Moon.
- A full-size copy of the Viking Lander, which landed on Mars.
- The hatch from the Gemini 10 spacecraft.
- A Mercury XIV spacecraft.
- Sounding rockets like those launched from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.
- A full-size copy of a Lunar Orbiter spacecraft.
- Real rocks from Mars and the Moon!
- A Lunar Landing simulator where you can try to land on the Moon.
Space Quest: Our Solar System and Beyond
This interactive space gallery is called "Space Quest: Exploring the Moon, Mars & Beyond." It has four main parts: Our Solar System, Living and Working in Space, Mars and the Moon, and Visions of Space Exploration.
Our Solar System: Giant Planets on Display
This exhibit shows off models of the planets in our Solar System. You'll see planets of all different sizes!
- Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune hang high above the second floor, almost 30 feet up. These are the biggest indoor planet models in any museum in the country!
- Jupiter, the largest model, weighs over 750 pounds and is 10 feet wide.
- Saturn is eight-and-a-half feet wide and weighs 450 pounds, with its rings adding another 495 pounds!
- Uranus and Neptune each weigh about 65 pounds.
- These huge models are made of strong Styrofoam and painted to look just like the real planets.
- Closer to the ground, you'll find smaller models of Earth, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. This is a scale model system, so Earth is about the size of a soccer ball, and Mercury is like a baseball.
IMAX Theater: Digital Adventures
The Riverside IMAX 3D Theater at the museum was the first IMAX Digital theater in the world to be part of a museum or science center. It's one of only 447 IMAX theaters worldwide!
See also
- Air Power Park
- Buckroe Beach Carousel
- List of aerospace museums
