Astronauts are visiting Seattle next week to publicize a NASA exhibit — Destination: Station — on view at Pacific Science Center now through September 2. It’s a multimedia exhibit that tells the story of the International Space Station, its space-based research, and the partnership of five space agencies, representing 15 countries, that runs it.
In conjunction, there’s a scavenger hunt all this week — NASA will hide two astronaut figurines each day, presumably while staff are not wearing space suits, as that seems like a giveaway.
Then they’ll tweet clues (via the Johnson Space Center Twitter handle, @NASA_Johnson, using the hashtag #DSSeattle).
“Winners receive one-time free entry to the exhibit and an astronaut meet-and-greet,” but it seems a given that you won’t meet Mainer Chris Cassidy or Minnesotan Karen Nyberg, since they are up on the ISS right now, no doubt trying to figure out how to fill Commander Chris Hadfield‘s Twitter shoes.
The 12-year-old station’s living and working quarters are now a little larger, NASA says, than a typical 5-bedroom house. (Including its solar panel arrays, generating between 75 and 90 Kw, the station takes up a football-field’s worth of space.) As of last July, it had been visited by: “81 Russian vehicles, 37 space shuttles, one U.S. commercial vehicle, three European and three Japanese vehicles.”
We wish we could tell you more about the exhibit, but there just isn’t that much information up on the Science Center site. What we can tell you is that it’s free with your admission to the Center ($9-$16). Also just opening is the Imaginate exhibit, which promises to stoke innovative powers.
