The NASA Museum

After the tram tour we headed back to the Visitors Center for some Space Dots Ice Cream of the Future...of course...and to finish the museum.  It was amazing.  These exhibits surrounded you as you walked through and they had such detailed and realistic panoramas that you felt like you were in outer space or on the moon, or in an actual NASA lab. 

The guys checking out the Space Lab.

Josh read that NASA collaborated with Disney to design the Visitor's Center/Museum.  It certainly shows like a movie set or theme park and held all of our attention and was interesting and educational to boot! 

Watch out below! This guy is working on the Space Station. 

They had an incredible exhibit of the Space Lab and how the astronauts lived in it.  Of course the photos don't quite express how realisitc it is, but everything was life sized and 3-D.

 

This fella is taking a space shower...no peeking!

LOVED this portion of the exhibit.  The ceiling was filled with thousands of stars and it was really breathtaking!  Even though it was simulated night-time, it felt real.

The moon rover.

We got to check out some cool moon rocks.  I was a little disappointed though - they looked like normal rocks.  Ha!  I was hoping for some glowing (or sparkly would have been fine too....) far-out looking specimens, maybe even alien fossils or something?!?!

But the coolest part was that there was one (heavily guarded) that we could touch!  We are all now blessed with the good luck from rubbing the moon rock!

Even Sweet Alaina got to touch the moon rock.  Such a cool "first" for such a little hand!

 

We checked out a few last artifacts of the space program before heading to Uncle Ray's for the night.  It was bittersweet to think of the of NASA retiring the shuttles.

  

But, I guess the future is calling and something bigger and better will come of this historic, monumental program.