ScienceWorks Hands-on Museum was like an asteroid field of kids Saturday afternoon as the youngsters bounced about the center, testing out a wide range of space-themed activities and displays. 

The Ashland museum hosted a one-year celebration of images and scientific findings from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a massive infrared observatory orbiting the sun and capturing images of distant galaxies around the cosmos. 

“I always love the energy out of these events,” said Colin White, a NASA solar system ambassador and volunteer at ScienceWorks. “I think science is such an interesting topic, and my motivation is to get everybody interested in science and space.”

The visiting kids were able to learn about outer space through interacting with hands-on activities such as an exoplanet scavenger hunt, arts-and-crafts station to make rockets, multiple spaceship displays to play on and much more.

“What we tried to do is build different areas in the museum that look at those areas of science with hands-on activities,” White said.

Taylor Pergin of Medford said her favorite part of the museum was “probably the rocket ship, there’s the front of the rocket ship and all sorts of buttons and switches to it.”  

Nine-year-old Mira Johnston fashioned her own rocket at the arts and crafts station. 

Her favorite part about outer space is the planets, Johnston said. 

Her little brother, Miles Johnston, was having a blast testing out all the spaceship displays as he prepared for liftoff. 

“He just loves anything that goes, anything that vrooms,” parent Liz Herzog said. “So this is a good experience for him to explore some different things because it’s usually just cars, so now we’re veering into spaceships.”

While the space-themed activities brought plenty of entertainment, the highlight of the event was a special talk and question-and-answer session with White. 

“He will be answering questions regarding the James Webb Space Telescope,” said Cora Sievert, operations director at ScienceWorks. “He loves to talk about space.”

“It’s the most powerful telescope ever launched into space,” White said. “Space telescopes like Webb are like time machines, they can look back to when the universe was created.”

“Webb is able to go back farther in time than any other telescope we’ve ever launched, even farther back than Hubble,” White added.

The James Webb Space Telescope launched into space on Christmas Day in 2021, bringing high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments to document every phase of cosmic history spanning back billions of years. Costing $10 billion to design, assemble and launch, the telescope will continue the work done by the Hubble Space Telescope with higher quality instruments to further investigate the final frontier. 

“It’s quite interesting the questions you get,” White said. “One area of interest for the James Webb Space Telescope was looking for life on other planets.”

Considering Ashland’s STEM-heavy population of Southern Oregon University graduates and attendees, the questions asked of White can range from simple to sophisticated, with some of the tough questions coming from kids. 

“With kids from around 8 to 13, their knowledge of space just blows my mind,” he said. “This valley has a lot of technical expertise, but then there are other people who don’t know very much about it.”

White, a retired information technology consultant and educator with 40-plus years of experience in computer science, has been a NASA solar system ambassador for five years. 

“My mission really is to get kids interested in science,” he said. “What I find often is that first exposure to science motivates them to get into a career in science.”

ScienceWorks’ objective is to provide education opportunities for the community with hands-on experiences, Sievert said. “We get a lot of additional grant support from other organizations to help promote science education pertaining to space.”

“It’s a way to help generate wonder and inspiration for people of all ages,” Sievert added. 

The museum plans to host another space-themed event Oct. 14 to celebrate the annual solar eclipse.

To learn more about the museum and see other ScienceWorks events, visit scienceworksmuseum.org.