The crew of the upcoming SpaceX mission Polaris Dawn was in Huntsville today to speak to Space Campers!

The crew toured Space Camp before addressing campers in the brand-new Space Camp Operations Center. The team discussed their upcoming mission, including mission objectives. Space Camp / Aviation Challenge alumni Julia Lantos was on hand to moderate questions asked by some Space Campers attending this week.

The mission is scheduled for no sooner than Q4 2023, with a possibility that the mission might slip into 2024.

Update: Coverage from WAAY-31
Update: WHNT has their report from the 5pm news on their YouTube channel here.

These four men will be inducted at the Space Camp Hall of Fame Dinner & Induction Ceremony on July 14, 2023.

You can get your tickets by going to https://www.rocketcenter.com/SpaceCampReunion. Tickets to the dinner are $100, but $250 will get you the “All Access Pass” into the entire weekend’s slate of events, including time on Space Camp simulators! Any donations of $150 or more, including All Access Pass purchases, will receive a patch from the Space Camp Alumni Association, available only for this event!

This is technically old news, but I just noticed it recently and thought it was worth a mention.

The “Lifetime Membership” option for the U.S. Space & Rocket Center has been on hiatus for a little over a year.

The lifetime membership had been offered for $1,000 and first became available in early 2014.

Curiously, “Lifetime Membership” is still an option on the Space & Rocket Center Online Shop, but clicking on it doesn’t take you anywhere other than the store’s home page.

Previously known as The Great Moonbuggy Race, the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge is back after a global-pandemic-sized hiatus of four years! This will be the first rover competition since 2019.

The competition starts tomorrow, Friday, April 21, 2023, and runs through Sunday. It is open to the public, so you’re welcome to go down and see teams compete!

The event is usually streamed online as well. Keeping an eye on the NASA Rover Challenge twitter feed would probably be the best bet to find out how to watch online.

The biggest change this year is the venue. The obstacle course has moved down to Aviation Challenge!

Best of luck to the more than 500 students from around the country and the world who will compete in this event!

May the best rover win!

I just came across this sound bite from Amazon.com and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and I thought it was worth sharing!

NASA held their big Artemis II crew announcement today! You can watch the entire video here, but the highlight is that Space Camp alumna and Space Camp Hall of Fame inductee Christina Koch was one of the four selected to go to the Moon on Artemis II!

The flight is currently slated for no earlier than November 2024!

Christina Koch was inducted into the Space Camp Hall of Fame in 2019, and you can learn more about her in her Hall of Fame introduction.

Christina is a five-time alumna of Space Camp, and soon she’s going to be going around the Moon!

Congratulations to Christina! She’s everything Space Camp founder Ed Buckbee had ever hoped for when Space Camp really got going. That an alum of his creation will soon be traveling as far away as any human has ever gone is really something special.

The entirety of this year’s Space Camp Hall of Fame Ceremony is now up on YouTube! It really was one of the best events put on by the Space Center in quite some time (and that’s really saying something)!

The staff did a tremendous job, as always! If you watch this year’s and think to yourself, “Oh, I wish I had been there,” I would encourage you to attend future events! It’s worth traveling for, especially if you haven’t been back to Camp in quite some time!

There are also the indivdiual speeches, the Inspiration4 chat, and more in separate videos as listed in the 2022 Space Camp Hall of Fame Playlist.