Photo: Mariah Fisher
Wonder what it’s like to be an astronaut? To feel microgravity, complete tasks performed in real-life space training, even try out a space toilet? Carnegie Science Center’s SpacePlace is the spot to dream big and find out. Walk inside a full-scale replica of two sections of the International Space Station (ISS), where you’ll find a bed on the wall, an astronaut floating above you, and that everything is tilted. It’s slightly disorienting, and intentionally so, connecting you to the astronauts currently living on the real ISS—a reminder that there are people in space at this very moment, and this is what they see. It’s many young Pittsburghers’ moment to be like Mike Fincke, the Emsworth native who as a young boy visited the old Buhl Planetarium and became entranced by the mysteries beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Fincke has spent more time in space than any other American, including a year on the ISS. One of the coolest parts of the SpacePlace experience: There’s always a chance you’ll be trying your hand at an experiment, only to look up at the live feed from the ISS and see one of its current residents doing the real deal in space.
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