How can you teach youth to interact safely with an environment and other people? Our new Clean Room Explorer Camps for ages 6-11 and Clean Room Space Center U programs for ages 11-18 educate participants in an immersive way while also maintaining health and safety.
What is a NASA clean room?
NASA has plenty of experience protecting not only humans, but also other worlds from potentially harmful cross-contamination. Spacecraft and satellites such as the James Webb Telescope are built completely in a clean room-type environment. Engineers and technicians wear full body protective suits, caps, shoe coverings, gloves, and face masks. These precautions are more to protect the spacecraft than they are to protect the humans working on it. Even the smallest piece of dust or hair could ruin sensitive instruments on a multi-million-dollar spacecraft.
Learning about the science behind clean room procedures–how it protects important things such as lunar samples and sensitive equipment on spacecraft, as well as how engineers and technicians use protective gear all the time–can help kids and youth understand more about health and safety in an educational way.
What is a clean room camp?
Just like NASA, safety is our top priority. Campers will learn how NASA prepares for a mission in an immersive way while maintaining health and safety. Class sizes will be limited this summer to allow everyone to follow social distancing and sanitation practices. Upon check in to education events, attendees will answer a questionnaire, walk over a tacky mat to remove excess soil from shoes, and then suit up in lab attire including face masks, lab coats, gloves, and disposable shoe coverings provided by Space Center Houston. All items are sterilized or disposed of at the end of the day.
Our new Clean Room Explorer Camps teach children ages 6-11 about NASA clean room procedures and history while introducing them to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through immersive activities and challenges.
Space Center U®️ engages ages 11-18 in high-fidelity clean room safety procedures along with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) activities. Campers will take part in educational activities, tour inspiring Space Center Houston exhibits, watch live presentations, and go behind the scenes at NASA Johnson Space Center.
We are excited to welcome education program participants back on site for immersive STEM learning experiences tied to space exploration.