“Mission To Mars” – New Exhibition With A Full-Scale Model Mars Rover –
To Open At The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum

A full-scale model of the current Mars Rovers highlights the new exhibition, “Mission to Mars,” that will open on Saturday, January 16th at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, located at Pier 86 (46th Street and 12th Avenue) in Manhattan.

“Mission to Mars” presents a timeline of the American space program from President John F. Kennedy’s race to the moon speech to the current Rovers on Mars, and even introduces the next Mars probe, Curiosity, which will launch in March 2011. Special emphasis will be placed on the role that the USS Intrepid played while acting as a space capsule recovery ship for the Mercury 7 and Gemini 3 NASA missions.

On weekends, museum educators will lead interactive, multimedia demonstrations where visitors can touch objects that include Rover artifacts, a piece of a solar panel and parachute material while videos and robotics demonstrations illustrate how Rover operates in space.

“Mission to Mars” is presented by the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, the Mars Public Engagement Project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Institute of Technology and NASA.