NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Image above: Visitors explore NASA’s "Driven to Explore" traveling exhibit at venues in 2008. Credit: NASA

NASA’s Constellation Program is on the move again. This time its "Driven to Explore" traveling exhibit is visiting hometown folks in Kansas. The exhibit offers visitors a chance to touch a nearly 4-billion-year-old moon rock brought back from the Apollo 17 mission and learn about NASA’s Constellation Program.

Now, it is supposed to be springtime in Kansas. But, the weekend at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson April 3-4 was cold. Very cold. And it was so windy that we could not put up our inflatable tent that wraps the front of our exhibit trailer.

With the winds gusting around 35 miles per hour, we were afraid our tent would have really been on the move. And, even though the temperatures were a balmy –ha! –upper 30 degrees Fahrenheit, the wind chill was in the teens. But those folks from Kansas are tough. We had around 200 people who braved the frigid weather to touch a moon rock.

By the next day, the temperatures were more tolerable, but the winds were peaking between 50-60 mph – that’s what we call hurricane weather in the southern regions of the country. Despite the high winds, nearly 1,000 people came through the exhibit.

Image above: Visitors explore NASA’s "Driven to Explore" traveling exhibit at venues in 2008. Credit: NASA

Next stop: The Kansas Aviation Museum in Wichita on April 10. Be sure and join us!

Here’s a line-up of the Kansas schedule:

April 10-11 (10 a.m. - 5 p.m.)
Kansas Aviation Museum, Wichita

April 13-14 (10 a.m. to 7 p.m.)
University of Kansas, Lawrence

April 16 (9 a.m. - 4:45 p.m.)
Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, Abilene

April 18 (9 a.m. - 3 p.m.)
Kansas State University, Salina

Contributed by Louis Parker, NASA JSC’s Exhibits Manager, who staffed NASA’s Driven to Explore Trailer in Hutchinson, Kansas.