Scobee Center reveals the beauty of the heavens, the excitement of space travel

The Scobee Education Center on the campus of San Antonio College gives local students and others an astronaut’s-eye-view of the excitement of space travel and the beauty of the universe.

It’s named for the Space Shuttle commander who died in the 1986 Challenger explosion and his wife, who has carried on the mission to promote space-science education.

Both Francis Richard “Dick” Scobee and June Scobee Rodgers attended San Antonio College in the early 1960s. After he died, she and other surviving family members of the shuttle crew got together to continue the Teacher in Space mission by creating the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. The nonprofit organization promotes scientific literacy and prepares students for success in what today is known as STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

The education center contains one of 45 Challenger Centers located in 27 U.S. states and three other countries.

“It’s an honor and tremendously rewarding that SAC named the center in my honor,” said Scobee Rodgers. “But it’s even more rewarding to know that students and their teachers from my hometown can learn and enjoy the benefits it provides all year-round.”

After she left the school and the city before getting her two-year degree in order to accompany her husband on his military career, Scobee Rodgers later graduated from colleges in South Carolina and California and eventually earned a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University. She later received an honorary associate’s degree from SAC.

The center consists of several parts. There’s the Scobee Planetarium, the Charles E. Cheever Jr. Star Tower observatory and the Challenger Learning Center, where students and others can participate in a realistic space flight simulation during a sort of mini space camp.

Built in 1961 with funding from the Eisenhower Mathematics and Science Education Act, the white dome that houses the planetarium originally was a stand-alone structure on the SAC campus. It was renovated in 1994 and then again in 2012. It was during that second redo that the Challenger Center, located on Brooks City-Base for nearly a decade, was displaced to make way for an extension of South New Braunfels Avenue. When officials from the Brooks Foundation asked SAC officials if they wanted to take it over, they jumped at the opportunity.

“We were thrilled,” said the center’s director, Rick Varner. “We contacted the area school districts to see if they’d support it by ensuring they’d budget funds to bring school kids here on missions and they said they would.”

Varner is careful to make a distinction between the space missions and a school field trip.

“They don’t just tour the facility, they actually run simulated space missions,” he said. Half the students in a class are chosen to work in the mission control center, monitoring the weather, navigation, the crew’s medical status, etc., and the other half serve as astronauts.

The center runs three two-hour missions for students in grades 4 through 12:

Expedition Mars. Students fly a spaceship from the Mars moon Phobos to the Martian surface and back.

Lunar Quest. They explore the lunar surface from a research habitat called Moon Base Alpha.

Earth Odyssey. Students examine the Earth’s environment from an orbiting space station.

Most Challenger Centers have flight simulation facilities, Varner said, but the one at SAC is one of the newest and the most technically advanced. There’s a space capsule that rattles during “takeoff,” a “decontamination room” that uses “lasers” on returning astronauts, robots to be manipulated, glove boxes to examine mineral samples and plenty of computers for each student to work on to complete their assigned tasks.

About the only thing Varner would have liked that he didn’t get was the Star Trek-ish “swooshing” sound with the opening and closing of the doors to the elevator that brings students to the second-floor center.

Participants wear blue NASA vests, work with computers and, most importantly, have to collaborate to ensure the mission’s success.

“When they get here they’re lost and confused because they don’t know what to expect,” said Jennifer Becerra, the academic program coordinator. “By the time they leave, they’re just flying through the program, working with one another, and helping each other to complete their mission.”

The Challenger Center is also open to adults and families several times a year. For information, visit the center website at alamo.edu/sac/Scobee.

Elsewhere at the center, the planetarium features a new light and sound system and an advanced digital projection system for showing entertaining and educational films that teach up to 100 — all in comfy, cushy stadium seats — about stars, planets, black holes and distant galaxies. Showings are scheduled most Friday evenings at 6:30 p.m. (family showing), 7:30 p.m. (“The Sky Tonight,” a live presentation) and a 9 p.m. educational movie presentation. Children must be 6 or older to be admitted to the two later programs. Tickets cost $2 for Alamo Colleges students and employees, $4 for children ages 4 to 17, for seniors 65 and older and those with a military ID, and $5 for other adults.

The center’s blue cone, probably the most distinctive architectural feature on the SAC campus (and winner of the 2015 Mayor’s Choice Award for publicly funded projects), is topped by an observatory that opened in 2014. It houses a 10-inch refracting telescope, “sufficiently powerful for viewing the skies in an urban environment,” according to Varner.

After being closed during December, the observatory will reopen after the first of the year, with volunteers from the San Antonio Astronomical Association on hand to set up telescopes on the outdoor deck for free viewing and discussion.

As San Antonio prepares for its yearlong celebration of its Tricentennial, Varner says this is a good time to consider how far the city has come and where it might go next.

“Three hundred years is just a blink of the eye compared to the age of the planets, the galaxy and the universe,” he said. “But when you think of the city’s rich cultural history and the diversity of people who live here, it’s fun to imagine what we can do in the next 300 years if we’re able to all work together.”

Meanwhile, Scobee Rodgers, who attended Harlandale High School and still calls San Antonio home, has family living here and visits often.

She’s the scheduled keynote speaker for the Assistance League of San Antonio’s Lit ’n Lunch event on Jan. 31 at the Witte Museum, where she’ll discuss her autobiography, “ Silver Linings: My Life Before and After Challenger 7.”

And yes, she said, there’s a good chance she’ll visit the SAC campus and check in at the education center while she’s here.