The Childrenβs Museum Tucson will offer free admission and special space-themed activities on Sunday to celebrate the successful completion of the University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx asteroid sampling mission.
The downtown museum at 200 S. 6th Avenue will waive its entry fee all day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The OSIRIS-REx Day activities, organized by the universityβs new Arizona Astrobiology Center, start at 1 p.m. and include opportunities to meet mission scientists, win posters and other swag and watch video footage of the spacecraftβs sample-return capsule landing in Utah earlier in the day.
Kids can also create their own star, planet or asteroid to add to the museumβs temporary space exploration mural or collect their own sample from a replica of the asteroid Bennu, experiment on the rocks and dust and take their work home with them.
βWe hope visitors are inspired,β said Corey Knox, deputy director of the Arizona Astrobiology Center. βWeβd like them to imagine they have a magic spaceship that can take them on an incredible journey through space, for example. We want them to use their creativity to color and bring to life the planet or asteroid theyβd love to explore and draw themselves in the spaceship, as if they were taking an extraordinary cosmic adventure.β
The goal of the new UA interdisciplinary center, which opens this fall, is to connect researchers, students and community members around astrobiology, which is the study of life in the universe and where it comes from. UA Regents Professor Dante Lauretta, who heads up the OSIRIS-REx science mission, is director of the center.
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is cruising back to Earth with a sample it collected from the rocky surface of asteroid Bennu. Recovery team members from the University of Arizona and elsewhere are now rehearsing for when the spacecraft's sample-return capsule parachutes down into the Utah desert on Sept. 24.
