Sometimes we forget the wonders that exist just down the street or conveniently located around the corner from home.

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center and Space Camp are truly exceptional features known worldwide, and there is a lot new happening there worth seeing, according to Dr. Kimberly Robinson, the new executive director and CEO.

New Space Camp Ops Center “We needed $1.5 million just to keep the lights on while COVID was happening at its worst,” she said. “To date, we have raised $3.4 million, which is great and has definitely helped us to get back to operating at least at a 50 percent capacity.”

Last year and throughout COVID, the main entrance to the center’s main lobby was closed as they contracted their footprint to better handle CDC guidelines. Now, there is a new entrance in the place of their old one and the center is again open.

“For any of you coming now, you’ll see the orange cones are gone from our driveway and we’re open for business as we used to be,” said Robinson. “We had to redo and open up the entrance because we only had three ticket desks at the Davidson Center we could utilize, resulting in really long lines out into the parking lot.

“We thought, if we don’t fix this for summer, people are going to pass out in the July heat trying to get in the building and that is certainly not the welcome we want to have for our city. Now we have seven ticket locations at the main lobby, and it will all be indoors so they can at least wait indoors in comfortable conditions.”

While staying in lockstep with other businesses in the Rocket City, Space Camp is opening May 23. The facility has hired 220 employees to help run it and the museum this summer. They are still hiring and training more staff in hopes of being back to full employment capacity by summer.

Space Camp2 “We are only operating Space Camp at 50 percent capacity this summer due to our continued strive to maintain social distancing and other measures,” said Robinson. “We are continuing to evolve what that means as national and local guidelines change, and I will tell you it’s always an interesting field trying to decide where the right line is.

“But at this point in time, we’re still requiring masks, so be aware of that, but we’re continuing to watch all the news to see how all that plays out in the future. That’s where we are now.”

She said even at 50 percent capacity this summer, they are for the most part, sold out for all their programs with a long waiting list.

Robinson also announced they will be breaking ground this fall on a Space Camp operations building, made possible through a $10 million economic development grant from the state of Alabama in 2017.

“It’s been delayed of course with COVID and other things, so we’re super excited to open this,” she said. “We are in dire need of the classroom space and the other space that this will give us here on the campus.

“It’s going to be a beautiful new attraction you can see from the road and it will have giant video screens so we can put out up-to-date information and pictures and graphics for those that are interested.”

The Rocket Center museum has numerous new exhibits that, if not already arrived, will be arriving soon.

slide 2 Dr Robinson prsentation “The newest exhibit currently being installed is called ‘Drones: Is the Sky the limit?’,” said Robinson. “It’s a wonderful exhibit and we are also adding on a feature where we actually have a netted space inside the main atrium lobby to fly drones and do demonstrations.

“We have a portion of the SLS Pathfinder arriving in July. It was used in the SLS program test stand down in Stennis (John C. Stennis Space Center) and also at the VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building) down at Kennedy Space Center. It was used to understand and practice how to handle the very large core stage of the rocket. They have donated it to the Space & Rocket Center, and we are currently preparing a pad for its arrival.

“As you know, the space shuttle just celebrated the anniversary of its first launch, and we prepared a shuttle exhibit for display to commemorate that event. It is currently an interim display, but we hope to continue to grow it.”

She said the museum also has an Astro One artifact, the first payload to fly out of Huntsville.

“It means a lot to a lot of us that worked at Marshall Space Flight Center, especially those that were around payload integration and crew training and other things like that,” said Robinson. “Teledyne Brown is helping us restore that, and we’re also requesting the actual science instruments from the Smithsonian to outfit that payload to make it look like it did originally.”

Blue Origin donated its Mannequin Skywalker test kit from January’s launch of its new Shepard rocket.

“We hope to make it part of our display that we’re starting on New Space so we can make sure everyone is leaving the museum not only with the history of the past, but also with an understanding of the future,” Robinson said.

In addition to those, the museum is hosting the traveling science of Guinness World Records, which will be coming this summer.

“It ties in well with our first Guinness World Record accomplishment set in July 2019 for the most number of model rockets launched simultaneously,” said Robinson, “Also, we can create an add-on to the world record so we’re actually thinking about what that might be, should we choose to do that.”

She said they have some great hands-on activities for the kids this summer, they are doing in partnership with the National Space Club, and funded by Lockheed Martin.

“You’ll see diver experiences and virtual reality, and one of the crowd favorites, bus tours out to our Aviation Challenge area,” Robinson said. “Aviation Challenge is a camp we run here but it’s normally off-campus and offsite to most of the people that come here to visit the Space & Rocket Center.

“We are going to get back to having those tours for anyone who wants to go over and take a look at the campus, which includes a beautiful large lake and many aircraft and other aviation challenge artifacts.”

Robinson also said attendance at the museum since they reopened has been great.

“We had a wonderful month in March because we had spring break that happens all over the country and so many people are anxious to get out, anxious to travel again, and to come out and be entertained,” she said. “I think we had visitors from all 50 states during the month of March that we were tracking.

“We’re getting back where we need to be.”

Finally, there are plans to resume tours of Redstone Arsenal that were popular before COVID but they prefer all NASA personnel to be back onsite when they do that.

“Most of our stops on the tour have places where you can see personnel at work and it’s just not as nice to see the empty spaces,” Robinson said. “But I believe we have an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) already been signed by NASA, and I believe by the garrison, if not yet signed, close to being signed, and then it will come to us.”

Robinson said that after Blue Origin announced an auction for seats on their July launch, her husband asked if she wanted a seat for Mother’s Day.

“This is what space exploration is all about,” she said laughing. “The opening up of space exploration so everyday Joes like me might actually have a possibility of flying in space.

“If we can’t make it in the astronaut ranks officially, I think it’s great that we are seeing an expansion of the entire space exploration genre, and I’m excited to see it.”