Exhibit reveals human’s 50-year space adventure

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The exhibition features many NASA-themed objects on an area of 2,500 square meters at Istabul’s Marmara Forum Expo Center.

A traveling exhibition that has already journeyed the continent over is now bringing the final frontier to Istanbul with an extraordinary collection of the instruments, artifacts and spacecraft of the past half-century of NASA space missions.

The largest exhibition of its kind to travel to Europe will offer visitors the opportunity to walk among the stars and get an up-close view of those who made it happen.

After being displayed in Stockholm and Madrid, “NASA: A Human Adventure” will open on Sept. 22 at the Marmara Forum Expo Center, bringing the history of NASA to vivid life. The largest NASA-themed touring exhibit outside the U.S. was created by White Room Artifacts, LLC, the company owned by Star Wars model-maker Don Bies.

Featuring more than 250 original objects and replica artifacts, the 2,500-square-meter exhibition is a strategic partnership between NASA and John Nurminen Events, and introduces visitors to the people, technology and engineering that have captured imaginations worldwide for more than 50 years. From early rocket prototypes to actual space hardware, the exhibition engages all of the senses, inspiring dreams of future space exploration.

Largest exhibition

The exhibition is the largest one ever conceived, designed and curated by White Room Artifacts, which also created seven of the exhibition’s models, developed the exhibit’s multimedia content and co-produced its multi-language audio guide.

“A team of more than 12 people at White Room Artifacts, about 45 minutes north of San Francisco, worked 14 months to prepare ‘NASA: A Human Adventure,’” said Bies, whose model work has included such films as the “Star Wars” saga, “Galaxy Quest,” “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films.

“This was a massive undertaking, from developing the conceptual ideas, to working with NASA to curate the exhibit, and creating models for display,” Bies said.

Global awareness

Deborah Rivera, NASA’s manager of strategic alliances, said the exhibition’s goal was to create global awareness of space exploration. “We want to inform people about what we do at NASA and, together, explore the unknown. We hope the exhibition will trigger questions, ‘a-ha’ experiences, and the joy of exploring the human elements that have taken us into space.” The exhibition is divided up into six interconnected halls: “Go fever,” “Dreamers,” “Pioneers,” “Innovation,” “Resistance” and “Next Generation.”

A replica of the entrance to the Apollo shuttle receives astronauts and leads them to the launchpad where the exhibition begins. Then an audioguide in several languages takes them through the exhibition in chronological order. Life-size replicas of the most important space vehicles in history, the original space suits worn by the astronauts and much more will await visitors until Dec. 22.