Welcoming Discovery

This isn't going to be much more than a photo story, but I want to let everyone local get a glimpse of how awesome the Smithsonian's Space Shuttle Discovery welcome festivities are before they're over tomorrow. We went today and it was amazing. The boys love the Udvar-Hazy museum anytime, but this four day welcome party blew their minds. Our friend Eddie who works at NASA gave us all NASA space shuttle program shirts for Christmas, and we decided to pull them out for the occasion, even though the boys' are just a shade too big. If you're local, and especially if you're local and have kids, you should get to this tomorrow! The boys are obsessed with NASA's Robonaut thanks to a National Geographic Kids magazine and online videos, so they loved seeing R1. We thought it would be R2, so we were a little disappointed, but next week at the Science and Engineering Festival at the Washington Convention Center, they will have R2, the robonaut the boys are in love with the most. There were a ton of cool exhibits and hands-on activities for kids. Here are some pictures.

Mars suit

looking at 3D Mars landscape

Robonaut 1-- almost as cool as R2

transporting Teddy Bear Astronaut from Earth to the space station

space shuttle simulated cabin-- 2/3 scale

driving a Cessna "to New York, but we're still in New Jersey"

the Space Shuttle Enterprise from the observation tower-- NY bound

They survived the airplane simulator!