Released
Dr. Phil Mjwara, the director-general of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), officially opened the DST’s exhibit at Gateway to Space: The Exhibition on 1 June 2016 at the Sandton Convention Centre. The exhibit focuses on the South African space sector and highlights astronomy as well as space science and technology. It is running in conjunction with Media24’s Gateway to Space: The Exhibition which highlights the people, and technologies behind suborbital flight, Moon missions and sustained life in space.
Through its association with Gateway to Space: The Exhibition, the DST aims to demonstrate its commitment to bringing awareness and inspiring the youth of South Africa to take up science, technology, engineering and mathematics as school subjects. So far more than 20 000 school children have booked to come to the exhibition.
Humbulani Mudau, chief director of space science and technology at the DST, said that space science and technology, particularly satellite applications, have rapidly become an integral part of our daily lives, from observation of Earth as a system to connecting people through mobile apps and broadcasting to satellite navigation.
The DST, along with organisations such as the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory, Southern African Large Telescope, South African National Space Agency, Square Kilometre Array Project (SKA), Cape Peninsula University of Technology and Denel Spaceteq, is exhibiting a collection of artefacts that depict success stories in this field. This part of the exhibition focuses on the South African space sector and includes SA’s space journey illustrated on a timeline stretching from 1535 to 2016.
Highlights of the Gateway to Space: The Exhibition include a real moon rock, a life-size Mir space station core module, a Sputnik-1 model and an Apollo capsule model. The exhibition runs from the Sandton Convention Centre from 1 June to 31 July 2016. Gateway to Space was assembled by the US Space & Rocket Centre, an official NASA Visitor Center.