Rev up your engines and get ready to “launch” into the extraordinary with exciting new thrills you will only discover through a  Space Center Houston field trip! Experience exciting new exhibts and features dedicated only to educators and their students! Book your fantastic field trip today!

Calling all Facebook fans! We want to give you the chance to win 5 entire years of FREE admission to SCH to celebrate NASA’s 50th Anniversary! All you have to do is become a fan of our new Facebook page, then simply Email us at blog@spacecenter.org with the subject line “Fan Contest”, along with your contact information for the chance to win FREE ADMISSION to Space Center Houston for 5 whole years! One month from now on Feb. 28th, 2009, we will hold a drawing and announce the winner of the Grand Prize!

The Grand Prize will include 5 annual memberships to SCH that you can redeem for yourself,or,share with your family and friends.That’s five full years of most incredible fun in the galaxy! Package also includes an official NASA 50th Anniversary T-Shirt for the winner!

Good luck to everyone!!

*Please check here for complete contest rules.

Space Center Houston is proud to be  nominated for the best museum in Houston by KPRC’s Houston’s Best Contest.  Please log on here and vote for us and help us reach for the stars as #1 in the Best Museum Category. Voting ends February 27, 2009.  Thank you and happy voting!!

We appreciate all of our guests here at Space Center Houston! This blog is from SCH fan Rhea Thomas and her family having a “blast”!!  Don’t forget, you can always email us YOUR  great guest experiences with photos, videos and comments  to blog@spacecenter.org!!–Kat, SCH Team Member

Blog by Space Center Houston Guest Rhea Thomas.

The official visitors center of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (NASA) in Houston, Texas is called Space Center Houston.  You can find attractions and space artifacts here and fun for the whole family.

It’s a great chance to talk about how to pee in space, aliens and gas…all big draws for my boys.

Space Center Houston

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‘Space rose’ adds New Year’s parade to its 5.3 million mile journey (article from collectspace.com)

December 31, 2008 — On New Year’s Day in Pasadena, California, among the hundreds of thousands of roses covering nearly 50 flower-formed floats in the Tournament of Roses Parade, among the more than 12,000 roses covering the Bayer Advanced “Wizard of Oz”-themed float, will be the only rose among them all that truly flew “somewhere over the rainbow.”

The two-toned pink rose, appropriately of the variety that was named after the parade (“Tournament of Roses”), circled the Earth more than 200 times in February 2008, aboard space shuttle Atlantis. How the rose came to be there, and how it is now to be a part of the parade, came as a result of the author of “Roses For Dummies” working together with an astronaut, who also happened to be his younger brother.

“I have had a long interest in roses and have written a number of books on roses,” explained Lance Walheim in an interview with collectSPACE. “Everybody was always kidding me, why don’t you send up a rose with Rex? The challenges of doing that, well, my staged answer was, ‘Rex can’t even grow a rose in his own backyard, how is he going to grow one in space?’”

The idea however appealed to Lance, and to Rex, who at the time was preparing to embark on his second mission.

“I thought that would be a great idea,” shared the younger Walheim. “Since I am from California, and the Rose Parade is here in California, and he is a rose expert, it seemed like a neat idea to combine his career with my career.”

As both brothers recalled, the problem was how to do it. Read more…