Drive a rover, plant space potatoes and more at Space Center’s Planet Pioneers exhibit

HUNTSVILLE – Do you have the right stuff to colonize a planet if given the chance?

Experience G-force in a spinning capsule, find water, build a habitat, grow space potatoes, and drive a 4-D Surface Exploration Vehicle (rover) over alien terrain – all at Planet Pioneers, a traveling exhibit that opened at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center this week and will remain throughout the summer.

Before you “arrive” on the planet, you will need to pack the right equipment, recruit a crew, and learn about the planets in the solar system.

Once landed, you will have to find sources of water and oxygen, grow food in the foreign atmosphere and build a shelter to survive the elements.

With a focus on teamwork, leadership and problem-solving skills, Planet Pioneers consists of 17 hands-on exhibits that help you figure out how to balance your resources and determine what you might need to live on another planet. You will have to decide what to take with you and determine what you might find there, essentially, learn how to survive in a strange environment.

Planet Pioneers centers the experience resourcing and planning for settling on another planet, highlighting the differences between Earth and other planets, and the challenges humans would face. And it also informs the visitor about how science, technology and engineering can help us survive and conduct research in a new environment.

Other challenges you will face during are fixing problems as they pop up; exploring and gathering rock samples; learning how it feels to live in a vacuum; flying a virtual drone to solve environmental issues; scanning the planet for surveillance, and more.

Planet Pioneers was created by Australian exhibit company Scitech and produced by Imagine Exhibition.