Learning Centers

At a Challenger Learning Center, students fly simulated space missions. The Learning Centers offer students the next best thing to actual space flight with a Mission Control room designed after NASA Johnson Space Center and an orbiting space station.

When students arrive at a Challenger Learning Center, they are first greeted by Learning Center representatives decked out in NASA flight suits. These Flight Directors, many of them former classroom teachers, provide an orientation briefing in which the students are given an overview of the mission, as well as their crew assignments.

Many of our programs are built on simulation methods inspired by the way NASA trains America's astronauts—such as the mission scenarios that routinely launch hundreds of thousands of students to Mars, Moon, and beyond in Challenger Learning Centers throughout the world. Educational simulations are dynamic models of real-world activity designed to allow students to face authentic conditions and problem solve just as their professional counterparts must.

Explaining the simulation philosophy, Challenger Center Founding Chairman June Scobee Rodgers once said, "Kids learn through seeing and hearing and interacting and feeling. That's why they love computer games, scary or funny movies, and sports. When they're interacting with one another or working towards solving a problem in a team effort, they're using all their senses. Because they've personally participated, they can recall the lesson from their own experience, and that has much more impact than simply recalling facts they've read or heard."

Additional Information

For more information on Challenger Learning Center programs, please contact a Learning Center Coordinator via e-mail at ns@challenger.org; by telephone at (877) 443-5701 or (816) 471-7770; or by completing the Feedback Form.