NASA Kiosk

Image of a interactive kiosk from NASA

The Littleton Museum is pleased to announce the arrival of an Observing With NASA (OWN) kiosk. The kiosk is located in the Littleton Museum’s video orientation room. 

Sponsored by Smithsonian Affiliations and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the interactive touchscreen table is one of ten that has traveled to 30 Affiliates between March 2022 and May 2023. The kiosk allows visitors to learn about NASA programs, and to create their own versions of actual space images using real NASA data. The Littleton Museum – a Smithsonian Affiliate since 2003 – applied for the kiosk at no cost in spring of 2022, and was awarded the kiosk as a gift in fall 2023. 

The History of Space Science & Littleton

Since the late 1950s, Littleton has played a significant role in the history of space science in the United States as the home base for staff and visitors to the nearby Lockheed Martin plant in Deer Creek and Waterton Canyons. Through the years, local engineers and space scientists have worked on NASA and US military programs like Titan, Viking, and Maven, to name a few. 

In a nod to that local legacy, the kiosk will help to leverage the unique appeal of NASA space science imagery. Intended for youth and their families, the exhibit kiosk will engage audiences in authentic STEM practices as they work with real astronomical imagery from NASA data archives. Participants can even email their personalized OWN images to themselves and share on social media.