What is a Challenger Learning Center?

The Center for Space Science Education is a not-for-profit organization headquartered in metropolitan Washington, D.C. Formed in 1986 by the families of the NASA Challenger STS-51L space shuttle crew. A Challenger Learning Center is a living memorial dedicated to continuing the education mission. The organization develops programs that help inspire middle school students to learn and explore while fostering an interest in math, science, and technology.  

Challenger Center creates space-based learning environments in which students have a hands-on opportunity to realize their critical thinking powers and decision-making skills that helps them to become scientifically literate citizens of the 21st century.

With a growing network of 53 Challenger Learning Centers across the United States, Canada, and Great Britain, more than 500,000 participants annually fly missions as part of Challenger Center's educational simulations. Scenarios include a return voyage to the Moon, a mission to re-supply a Mars colony, a rendezvous with a comet, and the environmental study of Earth from orbit.

Every Challenger Learning Center is a story in itself of a community bonding to give its young people the opportunity to "touch the future." Challenger Learning Centers are catalysts by which educators, parents, corporate executives, community leaders, government officials, and others join forces in a union with their educational systems to become directly involved in education.

Challenger Center reaches tens of thousands of other students and educators each year who are outside Learning Center service areas through classroom programs like Mars City Alpha and Marsville, as well as through intensive technological missions conducted over the Internet.

Through Challenger Center's programs and its international network of Challenger Learning Centers, the diversity, spirit, and commitment to education that exemplified the Challenger 51-L mission continues to make an impact on students, teachers, and families today.

Challenger Learning Center Brochure

http://www.eirc.org/content/challenger_center/EIRC-ChallengerLearningCenter-trifold.pdf