Center To Provide Space Adventure

By Journal Staff Report

The Challenger Learning Center planned for the campus of the Unser Racing Museum is part of a nonprofit organization founded by the families of astronauts killed in the 1986 Challenger space shuttle explosion.

Susan Unser, co-founder of the museum in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, said she hopes to have the new center — meant to boost middle-school student math and science skills — opened by January.

"It’s our dream," Unser said in a Journal interview late last week.

The Legislature in 2007 approved $605,000 to "get the ball rolling" on bringing a Challenger center to New Mexico, Unser said. The legislation said the center would be located at the Unser museum.

As part of the program, middle-school children after in-class learning take part in a simulated space exploration trip, with half of the group working as "mission control" and the other half working as a space team, she said.

"The learning centers offer students the next best thing to actual space flight with a mission control room designed after NASA Johnson Space Center and an orbiting space station," according to the challenger.org Web site.

The closest such centers are in Tucson and Colorado Springs, Unser said.

"The Unser museum supporters pitched the idea of a hands-on math and science center to be located on the grounds of the museum … Our advisers took the idea back to the governor, who enthusiastically embraced it," Gilbert Gallegos, Gov. Bill Richardson’s spokesman, said in an email to the Journal.

"We anticipate this is something that could benefit school-aged children from across the state," Gallegos wrote.

Unser said the initial $605,000 paid for preliminary architectural work for an already-existing building on the museum campus where the center will be located.

The estimated $1.5 million coming to the museum from the state this year will go for remodeling and building the center and "securing the Challenger contract," Unser said.

Unser estimated the project will take an additional $750,000, adding she hopes the state philanthropic community will pitch in.