Bell Museum hosts virtual Space Fest Feb. 4-6

(FOX 9) - The Bell Museum will hold its annual Space Fest event online Feb. 4-6, the museum announced Wednesday.

According to a release, the adapted event will include virtual activities for all ages, such as online talks with scientists, including some from NASA’s Goddard Space Center. Participants will also hear from researchers and students from the University of Minnesota. Kids can also join a story time for families and attend an exclusive History Science Theatre Zoom event.

To kick off the event, the Bell Museum will host a webinar session "The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World," with Sarah Stewart Johnson, an assistant professor of planetary science at Georgetown University. A former Rhodes Scholar and White House Fellow, she received her doctorate from MIT and has worked on NASA’s Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity rovers. She is also a visiting scientist with the Planetary Environments Lab at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. 

On Feb. 5, participants can join the Space Fest Cosmic Trivia as planetarium staff leads everyone through several rounds of trivia, with an intermission to create a special cocktail/mocktail. Prizes will be given to the winning team.

On Feb. 5-6, the museum will host the following events on its Facebook Live channel:

• Scientists from NASA's Goddard Lab working on various missions related to the search for life in space and the detection of life-supporting exoplanets.Researchers in the UMN College of Biological Sciences studying the biochemical study of early life forms on earth
• An astrobiolgoy microscope challenge
• Geomicrobiology Graduate Students studying subglacial microbes with the UMN Fringe Lab.
• A special family story time
• A special performance that takes participants back in time with History Science Theatre Live: Caroline Herschel. Caroline was the first woman to discover a celestial object, and the first woman to earn a salary as a scientist. Gather your family around the computer to experience an optical demonstration, learn about light pollution, and ask Caroline Herschel your own questions

For more information, click here.