The National Space Centre Experience

The Space Centre’s one of the best places in the UK to visit if you love everything about the universe around us. From facts and tidbits about each planet in our solar system and the Space Race. To astronauts who have reached new heights and destinations where no one has gone before and their life on the International Space Station.

You’ll find over six interactive galleries, the UK’s largest planetarium, and the iconic 42m high Rocket Tower! It’s truly a magnificent museum that is set to blow you away, plus being named an award-winning National Space Centre, means you’re set to have an out-of-this-world, experience.

The Space Centre also provides education for schools and regularly holds sessions and educational days out at the space and science museum. As well as workshops, virtual classes and even a chance to construct their own real rockets (child-friendly, of course).

This experience was one step for DOWTK and a giant leap for the DOWTK family!

You’ll find this fantastic tourist attraction in Leicester!

It’s not hard to get to and has plenty of parking spaces, as well as accessible spaces too.

As you walk towards the entrance, or way before that, you’ll see an unusually shaped building protruding from the ground. It looks like a nest of some sort and is kinda bubbly looking…Well, that’s the award-winning museum! It’s unusual, certainly stands out and is extremely noticeable – meaning unforgettable!

You’re eager and excited to walk in and discover what’s inside. It doesn’t look like a lot, but once you’re inside, you’ll be surprised at how much there is!

Before you walk through to the galleries, you’ll see 5 space outfits in glass cases. From a training outfit, and what astronauts wear as they’re launched into space, to the garment they wear in the ISS (International Space Station). The most interesting outfit we saw is the working uniform Matt Damon wore in the film, The Martian! Before moving your eyes over to the landing outfit.

The first gallery you’ll discover things you didn’t know about the observable universe, with a nifty technological computer screen that you can interact with. You’ll see a bird’s eye view of the Space Centre and you can zoom out 26 times…Why? To see what’s around us the further you zoom out. From the distance between our moon and us, the Milkyway and our galaxy, to bigger stars and right until the very edge of the observable universe. When you’ll read the distance in metres, you won’t be able to comprehend it in your mind!

Discover different space telescopes used to explore the dark and mysterious space around us and test how good your night vision is! There’s some nifty goggles you can look through, where you’ll first see a blanket of black sky…then slowly you’ll see tiny specks of light appear. Those are stars! How many can you see?

Above you, as you wander around, you’ll find replicas of satellites that we have and had in our skies – bigger than a human and pretty cool!

Did you know we are all made of stardust?! That was an amazing fact we found out. And there’s stardust all around us! From everything we eat and breathe, to whatever we touch.

Find out the answers to all your burning questions about the planets! What do they rain? Did you know Neptune rains diamonds?! Use a special contraption to discover what the starry sky looks like on your birthday (month and day) and look through a telescope to see itty bitty Pluto in a giant sky full of stars. Do you want to find out why Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet?

Have you ever been curious as to what you’d weigh on Uranus, Mars and Jupiter? That’s also possible. A fun, interactive experience is finding out how much a can of Heinz beans weighs on all the planets and our sun! Can you guess which will be the heaviest?

You can actually also control a mini replica of a Mars rover! In the little excavation area, remote control where the rover rides and it can also detect 3 different types of rocks too. The kids will absolutely love having to chance to control a Mars rover (I know we certainly did!).

This is seriously cool… You can explore replicas sections from the ISS. From the toilet and shower to the window that shows space outside! Do you know who lived in the ISS? British astronaut Tim Peake.

You can wander around the exhibit and find what he wore while on board the station, what foods he and other astronauts ate and the outfits they wear on walks outside the space station!

You can even watch Tim Peake’s launch into space! From the training he endured, the space launch and a tiny bit of what life was like onboard the ship.

You can also find a real moon rock from Apollo 17!!

Did you know the British National Space Centre holds a globally acclaimed and award-winning planetarium show?! The Sir Patrick Moore theatre is a domed planetarium that is simply spectacular and holds quite a few shows, from Space Lates, The Night Sky and Earth Observation to the Dark Side of the Moon and the show we went to see – We Are Stars.

As we were ushered in, we sat down and soon enough the room grew dark. The show we saw is globally distributed and has won many awards. With an animation style show to appeal to kids and a narration by none other than Andy Serkis (Gollum from Lord of the Rings. He takes you from the veryyy beginning of the Universe – the Big Bang to what elements were first formed – Hydrogen, Helium and tiny traces of Lithium. All from a tiny ball of matter to suddenly exploding and forming all sorts of space phenomena. From stars and galaxies to nebulas and the planets that we know, as well as regions of space that we haven’t discovered yet.

But all of this took billions of years. This show takes us back to before Earth was even created, to how stars are formed, how black holes work, what happened to the dinosaurs and how we are made of stars.

Throughout the show, you’re treated to spectacular and magnificent animations of the stars and space above. The colours are vibrant, the sound is booming, the show is entertaining and super factual. We felt like we had journeyed there and back again. It truly was a wonderful experience and 100% worth going back to see all the other shows!

The interactive displays aren’t the only cool exhibit here. Feast your eyes on a 42-metre-high rocket tower and another distinctive rocket from USA expeditions!

Crane your necks up as you witness the sheer height of these amazing artefacts. Interact with a soda experiment that shows you the difference between the US and Russia-made space rockets – deemed the Space Race.

Read about the Moon Buggy and watch a small replica of the Apollo Lunar Lander. How it worked and how the astronauts interacted with it throughout their expedition to the moon.

Want to experience an interactive mission to space? Head to the Mission Control station to see how successfully you can land the Apollo Lunar Lander and whether you have what it takes to be behind the screens in Mission Control.

For the kids, they can explore a real replica of a 1960s living room on the day of the most successful rocket launch to the moon there ever was. Watch it on the historic TV, and listen to real 991 calls about the launch! With a whole room full of genuine and amazing artefacts from the 1960s, you can really transport back.

Of course, it can’t be a Space Centre without more interactive displays, as you explore 4 floors of the Rocket Tower, you’ll find more displays as well as an amazing artefact collection and mini replicas of upright rockets and information about astronaut visits to the ISS and the moon.

Inciteful, immersive and inquisitive!! It’s the perfect place for those who love to think about what life is around us, what more there is to our planet and solar system and what could be next…

If you love to delve into space history and the first launches into space, well there’s no better attraction to visit. Whether you want to learn about Tim Peake’s journey, the life of many astronaut teams who did and did not survive on that launch or visit the marvellous Planetarium shows!