More than just a rocket on wheels
The SPACEBUZZ ONE from the German Space Agency at DLR is much more than just a lorry with a rocket-shaped trailer. It is a comprehensive school and education programme designed to complement STEM lessons. Before our vehicle arrives at the school, pupils aged eight and above take part in an extensive ‘astronaut training’ programme. Across eleven modules, they learn about spaceflight and its importance for society. The truck only arrives at the school when they have successfully completed this training. The ‘trainee astronauts’ are then taken on an unforgettable flight into space.
They take a seat on the movable chairs, put on Virtual Reality headsets and experience a virtual journey into space. The audience leaves Earth for 15 minutes and orbits our planet. They learn about our home and human-induced climate change from an astronaut’s perspective before continuing on to the Moon and returning back to Earth.
Our ‘Spaceship Earth’ is an amazing, unique and at the same time tiny part of the Universe. It is also known as the Blue Planet, as more than 70 percent of its surface is covered by water. Earth has a total surface area of 510 million square kilometres, of which only 149 million square kilometres are covered by land.
Incredible dimensions that are hard to grasp – until we leave Earth in a spacecraft and look down at it from space, like the two German ESA astronauts Alexander Gerst and Matthias Maurer. And that is exactly what schoolchildren and adults will be able to do. The two astronauts will take visitors on a virtual journey into space – around Earth, to the Moon and back again. A truly one-of-a-kind experience for young and old alike.
Link:
German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR)
German Space Agency at DLR
E-Mail contact-dlr@DLR.de
