Magic of the moon to get you spaced out
FANS of Life Science Centre in Newcastle no doubt will be surprised to find the attraction closed for the rest of the month.
The visitor favourite in Times Square has shut its doors for several weeks although its adjacent open-air ice rink remains open.
Regulars are told there are changes afoot and the first will be seen when the venue reopens in February - and it certainly seems that visitors will find it worth the wait.
This week Life revealed that the reason behind the temporary closure is so it can make alterations in readiness to welcome a major new exhibition which promises to be out of this world.
The building of it requires heavy construction but the result will be a new Space Zone, and to whet the appetite Life has unveiled images of a sevenmetre-wide moon which soon will be greeting visitors and displaying NASA images of the lunar surface while suspended in air. And this hints at the scale of the new exhibition which, unlike Life’s previous big shows Dino Jaws and Robots, will not be a travelling exhibition but a permanent new addition to Life.
Once the initial preparation work is complete, Life is set to reopen on February 2 - when the huge moon exhibit Museum of the Moon, which has been created by artist Luke Jerram, will be unveiled – but the Space Zone itself will not be completed until May.
The exhibition is a particularly timely one given the current space missions in the news: the NASA probe exploring the furthest reaches of the solar system and the Chinese spacecraft which has just made the first landing on the far side of the moon, which have ignited huge interest in exploring the universe.
Space Zone aims to bring space closer to home and will show how the future of space exploration is being
shaped here on our doorstep in the North East.
When it opens on May 25 – following the display of the giant moon until March 31 – visitors will be able to learn about how we are already using space technology in our everyday lives. And in a series of interactive zones they will have an opportunity to touch a real moon rock, learn how rockets are launched, operate a Mars rover and explore what it is like to live and work on the International Space Station.
The exhibition will complement Life’s planetarium, where visitors can sit under a dome and look out into the universe while enjoying such shows as a presenter-led tour of the night sky.
The Space Zone will also feature a digital globe theatre which will give visitors a chance to reverse their outlook and use satellite data to look down on Earth and explore everything from ocean currents and weather patterns to aircraft and shipping movements.
Life also will be using the globe to explore, initially, the Apollo moon landing sites and then other planets in the solar system.