The Challenger Learning Center in Wheeling, West Virginia provides unique learning experiences that seek to engage and inspire young minds through the excitement of space exploration and problem solving. Our on-site facility at Wheeling Jesuit University provides participants the opportunity to be transformed into astronauts, scientists, engineers, and researchers working together in order to Return to the Moon, Voyage to Mars, or Rendezvous with a Comet. The mission control crew directs the activities of the astronauts onboard the spacecraft—navigating, maintaining critical life support systems, communicating, and solving emergencies.

With the addition of the Micronauts program, our Center has opened its airlock doors to space adventures for students in grades K-3. With their natural curiosity and excitement about space and space travel, these students are the perfect age for an awe-inspiring learning experience. Students begin their mission in our planetarium as we travel 230 miles above Earth to the International Space Station. They become astronauts and scientists for the day as they conduct a series of innovative, standards-based, hands-on activities and experiments.

Our Center also developed an innovative distance learning program called e-Missions™ that links us to classrooms anywhere in the world. Each e-Mission provides teachers with an all-inclusive curriculum package comprised of teacher training and support, online lesson plans and materials aligned with standards, and technical support, and culminates with a live event conducted via videoconference between your classroom and mission control.