Ralph Applebaum Associates

The Adventure Science Center is a science and technology museum focused on inspiring children to learn. To build on its leadership role in science education and enhance its appeal to audiences of all ages, the center expanded in 2008 its planetarium and added a wing dedicated to the exploration of space. Its new experiential and educational elements created a memorable setting for interactive adventures and the strengthening of its public identity. A two-story cutaway space station, visible from the highway through a 40-foot-high glass curtain-wall façade, has become the center’s icon.

For the Space Chase gallery, RAA created hands-on, body-on experiences, including multi-touch technology, games, and physical interactives. They serve as learning labs and are part of outreach programs developed by the center that incorporate the local school curriculum. The Test Bed gallery is one-part NASA space-science lab, one-part astronaut-training center. Visitors experience the sensation of walking on the moon, discover the challenges of working in zero gravity, and launch model rockets to learn the roles of gravity, angle, and force in determining their trajectories.

In the Solar System Survey, a five-foot digital sphere, using internal digital projection, topographic maps, atmospheric data, and geological features, invites visitors to explore the relationships between the planets and their moons, to discover how much they weigh on Jupiter, and investigate why we have seasons.

Wonders of the Universe examines the visible and the invisible, the darkness of space and the brilliance of stars, infrared images of heat signature; it explores the electromagnetic spectrum, radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma rays.

Wonders of the Universe examines the visible and the invisible, the darkness of space and the brilliance of stars, infrared images of heat signature; it explores the electromagnetic spectrum, radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma rays.