The Cradle of Aviation Museum and Education Center is celebrating National Engineering Week during the February school break (2/16-2/22) to acknowledge the significant contributions engineers have made in improving lives and to motivate tomorrow’s innovators with an introduction to STEM skills.

The museum’s mission is to inspire future generations through learning, and will be open daily during school break for families to learn and share new hands-on experiences together.  Visitors can immerse themselves in the past and future of aviation and space exploration, can see a new movie or planetarium show in the museum’s immersive dome theater, or work on a free engineering activity. 

• See Dream Big on the big screen in our immersive Dome Theater. Witness how ordinary people found ways to defy the impossible, changing the world and their own lives in the process, in this award-winning documentary about the field of engineering. Showing Daily $10 for Adults; $9 for Seniors/Child 

• Experience Music & Astronomy, satisfy the senses as you sit back and go on a visual and musical journey of NASA missions and the galaxy in our immersive Dome Theater. Students from Adelphi University will be playing live music, while the beauty of the universe and humanity’s desire to explore it is illustrated on the big screen. Thursday, February 20th 6-8pm $15 for Adults; $12 for Students/Senior/Child 

• Learn About the Video Game Pioneers - Explore the history of video arcade games through exhibits and over 50 playable classic arcade games including Ms. Pac Man, Galaga, Space Invaders, Centipede, Donkey Kong, & Star Wars. Did you know that it was Long Island Physicist William Higinbotham who invented and built with a lab engineer, the first video game, Tennis for Two, at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958? February 15 through April 19 $10 per ticket

• Boy Scout Badge Mini Camp Scouts have the opportunity to earn their Aviation, Energy, Space Exploration and Robotics Merit Badges. Tuesday - Thursday, February 18-20 $200 per scout $180 per scout for museum members. 

National Engineers Week (Feb 16-22) was founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers in 1951, and is dedicated to ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce by increasing understanding of and interest in engineering and technology careers. Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day (February 20, 2020) helps focus a growing movement to inspire girls’ futures so they learn they have a place in engineering a better world.