Huntsville’s contributions to space, missile defense, cybersecurity, and engineering make it one the world’s most important centers for science and technology. All of it will be on display at the 2nd Annual Huntsville Science Festival’s STEAMfest 2021 this Saturday, October 30 from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. Admission is free.

This year, STEAMfest 2021 is live at the Von Braun Center with a distinguished slate of guest speakers, plus dozens of information booths and science activities extending out into Big Spring Park where many of Huntsville’s most innovative companies will demonstrate the importance of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics) in the real world.

Innerspace Brewing on Clinton Avenue is holding a STEAMfest preview event Thursday, October 28th from 6 to 10 p.m.

Festivities open at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday with Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle, Madison Mayor Paul Finley, and NASA Administrator, Kevin McGhaw.

Destin Sandlin, founder of Smarter Every Day will deliver the Keynote, followed by Michael Green the Science Machine at noon, the firing of portable lightning machines known as Tesla Guns at 1 p.m., and the Huntsville Ballet demonstrating dance and the physics of movement at 1:30 p.m.

STEAMfest poster Rock & Roll Hall of Fame drummer Chris Vrenna, who has played with Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins and David Bowie to name a few, will demonstrate the science of sound at 2:30; and at 3:30, Steve Trash, the Rockin’ Eco Warrior will perform his Totally Rockin’ Environmental Science show.

The Tesla Guns will end the presentations “with a bang” at 4:30.

Northrop Grumman will have 20 interactive booths, prizes, and demonstrations including a 40-foot-tall rocket tower.

NASA will have hands-on displays and interactive booths.

Participating companies will be giving away 2,000 science kits, and there are opportunities to meet scientists from many different fields of study including paleontology, archeology, meteorology, geology, and more.

According to Kathryn McCown M.Ed and co-founder and director of STEAMfest 2021 said their affiliation with the MIT Science Festival Alliance helps make the festival happen.

“Our overarching goal is to get kids (and adults) interested in STEAM learning and careers,” said McCown. “Leading up to this event, we handed out over 1,800 science kits to kids through the public library system, and at certain times they could go online and use the kits while working live online with all kinds of ‘ologists’.”

Sponsored by the Innovation for Education Foundation with many local companies as sponsors as well, art contest winners and lucky lottery winners at STEAMfest will be awarded “space-flown” dinosaur bones. Only a few hundred dinosaur bone fragments exist on the planet, but some of them went into space with Jeff Bezos on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. They will be framed with a certificate of authenticity from Blue Origin stating they have been “space-flown” and are officially “Space-Dinosaurs.”

“We have teased that these dinosaur bones are the oldest thing from earth to have flown in space, after William Shatner,” McCown laughs.

“We also worked with Blue Origin’s Club for the Future on a project called Dream Big Alabama (www.clubforfuture.org/missions/dream-big-alabama) to distribute postcards to children who drew pictures on them, or wrote something on them, and then those postcards went into space like the dinosaur bone fragments, on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.”

Jeff Bezos had them stamped “space-flown” and we recently gave them back to the students.

“It was a very rewarding experience!”

For STEAMfest 2021 details and speaker/activity schedules, visit www.huntsvillescience.org.