After Hours: Apollo

Enjoy an evening at the museum, open until 8:30 pm for this After Hours event. Whether you’re sketching, photographing, painting, or coloring, let inspiration be your guide as you curate your evening from a host of activities, including a show in the Whitney and Elizabeth MacMillan Planetarium. Weather permitting, telescope observation will be offered on the Ruth and John Huss Observation Deck.

Check out the display in our Education Wing: Space Race: America’s Journey to the Moon, and craft a paper lunar lander and get it to the Moon!

The Apollo missions transfixed America. When we finally landed on the Moon in 1969, it kicked off a wave of excitement—and every company wanted a piece of lunar pie. Everything from drinking glasses to patches to toys were made to commemorate the Apollo missions’ historic moments.

Fiber to the People: Plied Cords

Prior to mechanization and the Industrial Revolution, how were raw wool, cotton, and other fibers made into usable material to make cloth?
Becka Rahn, artist and instructor from the Weavers Guild of Minnesota, will lead visitors in transforming wool into yarn. Working with a partner, you’ll learn to spin wool and ply it back on itself to create a bracelet. This activity is open to visitors of all ages. In partnership with the Bell Museum’s Solution Studio, this program is part of the Weavers Guild’s Fiber to the People program, which explores historical methods of fiber production as sustainable solutions for the future.

Activities free with gallery admission. Planetarium ticket fees apply.

Special guests: Nancy Atkinson and Earle Kyle, 7 pm

Nancy Atkinson’s first book, Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind the Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our Views of the Cosmos, chronicled the travails and triumphs of nine current space missions. Now Atkinson is coming to the Bell Museum to talk about her second book, Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions, which tells the stories of the people who worked to make the first Moon landing possible.

Join us to hear more about the amazing engineering, science and technology that went into this historic mission! High-tech aerospace and business development consultant Earle Kyle will also join this conversation and share his experiences at Honeywell during the Apollo mission.

This talk has limited seating on a first-come, first-served basis.

Also visit Solar System Ambassadors Nadia Abuisnaineh, Elizabeth Treat, and Ron Schmit in the Nucleus to try out their hands-on activities 5:30–7 and 8–8:30 pm.

Tiny Moon Rocks

Hold samples collected by Apollo astronauts in your hands! On loan from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the six-inch disk contains three samples each of lunar rock and lunar soil encapsulated in clear Lucite. The samples come from missions between 1969 and 1972 and include a wide variety of rock and soil types. You can see bits of ancient lava flows, soil from sites across the Moon, and volcanic ash from a lunar eruption 3.5 billion years ago. The lunar sample disk will be on view from 6–8 pm.

Planetarium

6 pm: One Giant Leap
7 pm: Minnesota Night Sky

Click here for tickets and availability.

Advance tickets for planetarium shows are available up to three weeks ahead of time via the link above. If you are a current Bell member, please log in first, to receive your discounted tickets.

*In the case of inclement weather, observing will be canceled.