Down to Earth: How to experience outer space without leaving the planet

There are a variety of ground-based experiences that can fulfil travellers’ space dreams without the vast financial outlay of heading into orbit. From tours around NASA space centres to zero-gravity flight experiences, here are just a few ways you can cross the final frontier without leaving terra firma…

NASA space centres, USA

For around 50 years, the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral have given visitors a taste of space via their immersive tours. The experiences here engage you in every aspect of space exploration, from seeing replica rockets tower overhead to taking part in ‘astronaut training’. You can even enjoy a day-long Mars Base experience, during which you can try your hand at managing a base and harvesting ‘extraterrestrial’ vegetables.

Elsewhere, NASA space centres are dotted all over the US, each one offering a different kind of experience to the next. The Johnson Space Center in Houston lets you explore its astronaut training facility, see the colossal Saturn V rocket and head inside Mission Control (the control centre Apollo 13 astronaut Jack Swigert was addressing when he uttered the immortal phrase: “Houston, we have a problem.”).

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, offers free guided tours (advance booking is required). Locations include its visitor centre and an engaging display charting NASA’s exploration of our solar system’s moons and planets, as well as the Spacecraft Assembly Facility. And in Huntsville, Alabama, the US Space and Rocket Center is home to one of the most extensive collections of space artefacts, totalling more then 1,500 pieces.

Centre Spatial Guyanais, French Guiana

French Guiana might initially seem like a strange place for ‘Europe’s Spaceport’, but its proximity to the Equator makes it a far more efficient location from which to launch spacecraft, thanks to the Earth’s spin being significantly quicker here. This remote space centre also delivers one of the world’s most comprehensive experiences. Its three-hour guided tour takes you all around the facility, with the visit to its huge launchpad being the particular highlight. It’s worth noting that tours need to be booked at least 48 hours in advance and passport information is required. Plan your trip carefully (visit the European Space Agency website for the launch schedule) and you might see a live launch yourself.

Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan

Go back to where it all began. The Baikonur Cosmodrome is where Yuri Gagarin took his historic flight over 60 years ago. Once the shining jewel in Soviet space ambition, the cosmodrome was off-limits to visitors for many years but is now open for guided tours. The site is huge, and tours help you absorb many of the 14 launch pads, 34 engineering complexes and two aerodromes. You’ll peer into the very launchpad Gagarin took off from, as well as the cottage he holed up in for the days before his landmark launch.

Other experiences

There’s a surprising diversity of ways to explore space from Earth beyond the space centres. Indeed, you can get a sense of what weightlessness would be like on a zero-gravity flight such as the Zero-G Experience, where a modified plane flies in parabolic arcs that create a zero-gravity environment in which passengers float weightlessly on board. You’ll find these in several destinations, including Miami, Long Beach and Houston in the US, as well as at Novespace in Bordeaux.

A number of organisations, such as the International Space Centre and Australia’s Fogarty Foundation, run space boot camps for students that are designed to foster interest in a broad range of space career paths.

Elsewhere, NASA and other organisations have been known to run experiments in which volunteers live in habitats specially designed to simulate life in a pod on the moon or Mars. These experiments provide crucial data for scientists to better understand the implications of life in space on human mental and physical well-being, though how fun this would be is very much up for debate. China has also reportedly been building a ‘Mars base camp’ visitor experience in the Gobi Desert in Gansu province.

More conventional experiences can still provide plenty to fuel the imagination, from a visit to a space museum, such as the UK National Space Centre in Leicester, or seeing a spacecraft under construction at the Moonshot Museum in Pittsburgh. The stars have never been more easily within reach. ME