For an exhibition that promises to take us earthlings on a journey beyond our blue planet, Emporium Melbourne’s Neighborhood Earth proved hard to find at first. Forget going halfway to the Milky Way, we first had to navigate several levels before crossing a food court in a shopping center in the middle of Melbourne’s CBD. You couldn’t find a display area that is less conducive to charm.
Fortunately, once you managed to find the right spot, the exhibition itself proved a beguiling distraction for a rainy morning. This reconstruction of our solar system occurs through a partnership with NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center and the US Space and Rocket Center. Giving your name and credentials to Neighborhood Earth means the survey is stocked with the latest news and entertainment to intrigue and delight space nerds. A timeline at the beginning takes us back to the first observations of the starry sky by ancient civilizations and concludes with the first human orbital spaceflight by a private company in 2021.
Designed to appeal to kids and adults alike, there’s enough techno-wizard and engineering feats and untold space paraphernalia to satisfy most, including model vehicles, a full-size replica of a space station and a space suit of astronaut who is taken to Apollo. missions In learning areas specially designed for children, there is the opportunity to find out, if you ever wanted to, about the force of gravity and how 4.5 kg will feel on other planets.
There are stunning hologram modules that offer interactive touch screens of all the planets so you can learn more about their individual terrain, atmosphere and temperature, as well as being able to zoom in and out and rotate them to different angles for further inspection detailed
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It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the exhibits and information on display, but sometimes the simplest display can be the most interesting. Did you know, for example, that the following were invented for space but ended up being used on Earth? Lenses resistant to scratches, dust, water filter, solar cells.
The most impressive inclusion is the multi-screen cinema show surrounding a huge projection-mapped dome. Just half an hour long, viewers are taken through the results of some 60 years of space exploration, going through all the planets and their relative distance to ours. It’s an intoxicating experience to look at celestial bodies up close, in all their strangeness and beauty with their stark craters, gaseous atmospheres and multiple rings.
If there is only one message for Neighbor Earth it is how truly small, insignificant and yet precious life-giving planet Earth is in the cosmos compared to our nearest and most distant neighbors.
Neighborhood Earth presented by Fever and Toto CreativeEmporium Melbourne
Tickets: Starting at $17
Neighborhood Earth will be on display until August 28, 2022.