Exploring Space

The Exploring Space gallery contains a host of rockets, satellites, space probes and landers. You’ll be able to find out how the space age started in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik 1 and how we’ve gone on to launch thousands of satellites around Earth, send spacecraft to other planets, walk on our Moon and peer into the heart of our galaxy and beyond.

You’ll find a history of the rocket – from examples of early gunpowder rockets through to liquid-propelled ones developed for missiles and then adapted to launch spacecraft. You can also learn about nuclear and electric rocket.

Above your heads are two real space rockets: one a British Black Arrow, the other a United States Scout. A Black Arrow launched the Prospero satellite in 1971, while Scout vehicles put hundreds of payloads and spacecraft into orbit between 1960 and 1994.

There is a section devoted to the thousands of satellites – working and redundant, as well as the pieces of space debris – that are orbiting Earth. A huge projection depicts these in their low, medium and high orbits. Find out what satellites are used for and why they are an indispensable tool for studying climate change.

The Spacelab 2 X-ray telescope – all 3.5 metres of it – was actually flown on the Challenger Shuttle in 1985. Learn about the University of Birmingham team that designed it, built it and then reassembled it for display 20 years later.

The telescope stands near to the Museum’s refurbished lunar module. This is a highly accurate, full-sized replica of ‘Eagle’ – the lander that took astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin to the Moon in 1969. And just alongside you can find out more about how we are able to live in space – to breathe, to eat, to drink and… to go to the toilet.

Nearby is the section that looks at how we are exploring other worlds. There is a full-size replica of the Huygens lander with parachute that landed on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, in 2005. Have a close look at a model of Beagle 2 – we lost contact with the real spacecraft but the innovative technology developed by scientists for the project is being fed into other Mars missions and applications on Earth.

And we don’t forget our star and others: have a look at models of SOHO and AMPTE – two spacecraft that have helped us understand better the Sun and its effect on Earth. And then there is the one-fifth-scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope which hangs majestically over a flight spare detector from its faint-object camera.

This gallery redevelopment is supported by EADS, and the British National Space Centre,
and the Science and Technology Facilities Council.