The National Space Centre

The award winning National Space Centre is the UK's largest attraction dedicated to space. The brain child of the University of Leicester, which itself is a world renowned centre for space expertise, construction was completed and the centre launched on 30th June 2001 by NASA astronaut Jeff Hoffman.

Her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited on 1st August 2002 and spoke live via video conference to the Johnson Space Centre in Houston to wish Atlantis Crew STS-112, including British born astronaut Dr Piers Sellers, well on its mission to the International Space Station. Over 300,000 people visited the Space Centre in its first 12 Months.

The full crew of Atlantis Flight STS-112 visited in January 2003 – the first ever visit by a full Shuttle crew to the UK. By the end of the year, all eyes turned to Mars as hopes rested on the tiny UK-built Beagle 2 Lander in its quest to find evidence of life.

However, in 2004, the Lander Operations Control Centre for Beagle 2, situated at the heart of the National Space Centre exhibition, became the focus of the investigation in to why no signal was ever received from the Martian surface.

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Europe / UK-England

Lat: 52° 39' 15.98" N
Long: 2° 8' 58.3" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Shot in RAW format with a Canon EOS 20D and Sigma 8mm Fisheye, mounted on a Nodal Ninja NN3 Pano Head and Manfrotto 190 tripod. 4 portrait shots taken at 90 degrees plus zenith and a handheld nadir image. Stitched in PTGui on a PowerMac G5 and output to layered PSD. Cube faces created in CubicConverter, nadir patched in Photoshop and final movie output from CC.