Goddard Visitor Center Programs

We hope that you are staying cool this summer…here’s what we have planned for the remainder of August, 2013:

Summer Hours: During July and August, the Visitor Center will be open extended hours Tuesday-Friday, 10am-5pm, and Saturday-Sunday, 12pm-4pm.  We hope to see you here!

Sunday Experiment
Ordinarily beginning in September, we will feature a special Sunday Experiment this weekend, August 18 from 1pm to 3pm!


It's a free afternoon for elementary school-aged children and their families with a look at how NASA sends and receives its data.



Participants will learn about the electromagnetic spectrum, the communication cycle, and the engineering work NASA does to overcome the challenges to communicating in space.



This month’s Sunday Experiment will explore NASA’s Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration. LLCD, launching aboard the Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer on Sept. 6 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., will take the next step in creating a high-performance space-based laser communications system. NASA currently uses radio waves to transmit its data. To continue to enable increased observation capabilities aboard satellites, transmitting data over greater distances, with a corresponding increase in data downlink rate and data volume, NASA is demonstrating two-way high-rate laser communications via LLCD.



Planned hands-on activities to be featured this month include building a string-can telephone to help demonstrate the communication cycle, a laser-pointing activity to demonstrate the complications NASA must overcome to shoot lasers back from the moon (238,900 miles away), and learning how to tune-in to the correct frequency with the electromagnetic spectrum.



The Sunday Experiment, usually held the third Sunday of each month from Sept. through May, with some exceptions, spotlights Goddard's world-renowned science and engineering research and technological developments. Families leave inspired by the activities, wowed by the scientists and engineers, and excited about Goddard's revolutionary research and technology. In addition to celebrating all things science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the Sunday Experiment celebrates major science missions that are managed by Goddard and set to launch in the near future.


Science on a Sphere
Nearly every hour of the six days we are open for your education and enjoyment, movies and animations run continuously in this theater.  Come see some of the best in NASA science visualizations on space exploration, the Sun, planets, moon, and Earth.  

Renovated Exhibits Gallery!
The first phase of the Goddard Visitor Center enhancement project is finished and the exhibit gallery has fully reopened. In fact, we just completed the installation of a new set of giant doors which will allow us to bring in larger exhibits in the future.  This was something we have been in urgent need of since the construction of the Visitor Center.

NASA’s Fermi Observatory is becoming famous for its observations of high energy, very violent events in the cosmos.  We just began installation of a new exhibit about Fermi this week…more about this incoming exhibit next month.

Open Labor Day
The Visitor Center will be open on Monday, September 2, from noon to 4 pm. Bring your family and friends!

And you can always visit the Visitor Center Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/NASAGoddardVisitorCenter <http://www.facebook.com/NASAGoddardVisitorCenter> ) or home page (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/visitor/home/index.html <http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/visitor/home/index.html> ) for more information.

Thank you for supporting our programs, and we hope to see you at the Visitor Center soon!