Mars Base One, Kennedy Space Center

Tasked with bringing immersive science education programs at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to a new “gold standard,” IDEAS and our partners created the design for a new interlocking STEM education program set inside a realistic off-world habitat called Mars Base One. The scaffolded learning programs scaled in duration from 90-minute guest experiences to daylong student field trips and multi-day camps. 

To deliver the slate of new STEM education concepts populated with believable mission challenges that would be encountered in an off-world environment, the IDEAS team completed a comprehensive conceptual design program for a renovated 27,000 SF building at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Facility. This included arrival, queuing, and transition spaces; airlock entry portal; operations center; life support, engineering, and bio sciences/medical labs; crew quarters; and a large hangar deck with a variety of simulator platforms and systems to allow participants to rehearse surface excursions.

The work included a complex master schedule for rotating groups through the facility across varying levels of duration, price points, and bundled programming with other locations and attractions at KSCVC based on primary market research and industrial engineering models developed by our partners at Integrated Insight. IDEAS concepts were the basis of the new Astronaut Training Experience at Mars Base 1 now open at the KSCVC.