Museum of Aviation hosts ‘Space Week’

WARNER ROBINS, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT)— The Museum of Aviation is hosting its first ever ‘Space Week’ as a way to make space education more accessible.

The Museum of Aviation usually hosts a Young Astronauts Day. That involves around 500 people coming to the museum at once. Museum of Aviation Director of Education Melissa Spalding says organizers wanted to expand the virtual program to a whole week, from April 24 to May 1. Spalding says most of the programs utilize cyber space.

“There’s student programs, teacher classes, virtual field trips all kinds of fun activities throughout the week,” says Spalding.

Almost all the events are free thanks to sponsorships from:

• The National Defense Industrial Association
• The Georgia Space Grant Consortium
• The Robins Spouses Officers Club

The only events that have a fee are two in-person student STEM labs. They will be at the museum on both Saturdays of Space Week. Spalding says space education is a great way to help students learn about STEM.

“Students really have a knack for wanting to experiment and really test things so we do that in a real hands on fun way,” says Spalding.

Valerie Myers is in charge of grants and development for the National STEM Academy. She says the virtual programs and events will help reach students during a time when they can’t take field trips. Additionally, Myers says there are space-themed activity kits available for teachers to check out and use in their classrooms.

“We’ve got one that is modeling the earth’s solar system,” says Myers. “We’ve also got the Mars ingenuities and perseverance kits there’s two of those that we have.”

Myers says it’s amazing to provide resources to schools, teachers and home school parents.

“I know that they’re really struggling, I know the students are probably struggling,” said Myers. “They can’t get out. They can’t visit. They can’t move around. So being able to have these resources where the teachers can bring in different things into the classroom is probably a huge relief.”

If you want to sign up for Space Week, visit the Museum of Aviation website.