From Dream to Discovery

Show Details

11/03/22

• Show runs 7:30-8:30pm, Doors open at 7pm
• Tickets for sale starting October 21 from Vallitix
• Cost: $8 for adults, $6 for children and seniors + Vallitix handling fee

The William M Thomas Planetarium will show “From Dream to Discovery: Inside NASA!” on Thursday, November 3, from 7:30 to 8:30 PM, so you can how 0.5% of your federal tax dollars are spent. Doors will open 30 minutes before the show starts for seating and will be closed during the one-hour program with no late admittance. Tickets will be available for $8/adults and $6/seniors and children 5-12 years old via online only starting October 21 (tickets will NOT be sold at the door). The William M Thomas Planetarium is on the second floor, northwest end of the Math-Science Building, Room 112. The map below shows you where the planetarium is. No food, drink, or gum/candy is allowed in the planetarium. Children must be 5 years or older.

The one-hour show will begin with a short tour of the evening sky using the planetarium's Goto Chronos star projector followed by the 30-minute all-dome presentation from the Boston Museum of Science called “From Dream to Discovery: Inside NASA” using our Spitz SciDome projector.  Explore how NASA engineers build the amazing ships that take us on journeys across the cosmos. ”From Dream to Discovery” begins with an exploration of the Hubble Space Telescope, with its many intricate parts that must work together to help this observatory achieve great things. From there, we explore the James Webb Space Telescope, currently under testing at NASA. Finally, the show explores the New Horizons mission to Pluto, revealing the engineering challenges the mission has faced in its ten-year headlong rush to a distant fascinating world.

How do engineers plan for the extreme environments a spacecraft must endure? Where do they test their work? To answer those questions, From Dream To Discovery: Inside NASA takes us to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Integration and Testing facility, where space missions get tested. It shows how, from design to creation to launch, engineering is an exciting and fundamental process in space exploration. Finally, we witness a launch, the next step for a mission as it leaps up through Earth's gravity well.

Map to Planetarium

Also see the Online Campus Map for more information on the location of the planetarium, and our Parking Information page.

Webpage contact: Nick Strobel