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Your Definitive Guide to the Kennedy Space Center Camp

Every year, the Kennedy Space Center organizes a five-day summer camp for students between 7-16 years of age. The camp offers hands-on science, technology, engineering, and math activities designed to entertain and challenge them. It takes place across the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex exhibits and attractions with a curriculum consisting of fun educational adventures designed to cater to each age group.

Read on to know more about the Kennedy Space Center Camp, how and why you should attend, what it includes, and more.

Why Attend the Kennedy Space Center Camp?

Kennedy Space Center Camp
  • The camp offers practical, activity-based learning that allows students to participate in hands-on STEM challenges.
  • The Kennedy Space Center Summer Camp allows students to access and explore all sections of the complex.
  • Students get a chance to participate in fun team-building, collaboration, and communication exercises.
  • Go on field trips, overnight adventures, and take part in private educational programs.
  • Take part in different missions like Mars habitation operations and surface exploration through virtual reality, Botany Lab vegetable growth and harvesting, a simulated space flight from Kennedy Space Center to Mars, and more.

When is the Kennedy Space Center Camp? 

The five-day-long Kennedy Space Center Camp takes place from Monday to Friday from 8 AM to 3 PM. Here is a detailed schedule:

  • Week 1: 29 May 2023
  • Week 2: 5 June 2023
  • Week 3: 12 June 2023
  • Week 4: 19 June 2023
  • Week 5: 26 June 2023
  • Week 6: 3 July 2023
  • Week 7: 10 July 2023
  • Week 8: 17 July 2023
  • Week 9: 24 July 2023
  • Week 10: 31 July 2023

About the Kennedy Space Center Summer Camp

Activities

The Kennedy Space Center Summer Camp hosts different kinds of activities such as hands-on STEM challenges, labs, and astronaut-training simulations specially designed to cater to each age group, team-building exercises, and communication and collaboration exercises. Campers train in three areas - Launch Operations, Mars Operations, and Microgravity Operations. They learn to work together to dock their spacecraft and deal with emergencies.

Missions

Campers get to take part in various missions like engineering builds, engaging in habitation operations and surface exploration of Mars through virtual reality, working in a frictionless environment during a simulated spacewalk, sending data to real NASA scientists on the vegetable growth and harvest in the Botany Lab, taking a simulated space flight from the space center to Mars, and optimizing power for the Base using Mars rover robotics.

Teams

Campers are divided into teams based on their date of birth. They are divided into five teams - Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and InSight. Campers will be required to select their birth date range while making their reservations.

International Camps

The Kennedy Space Center Camp offers a unique and memorable experience to international students through a 3 or 5-day program that focuses on STEM challenges using authentic NASA science. It helps them understand the space agency’s mission to study and understand Mars to achieve their goal of being able to land humans on its surface in the future. Students train in two programs - Astronaut Training Experience and Mars Base 1 - where they get to participate in guided tours of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex and the Apollo/Saturn V Center as well as interact with a real NASA astronaut in private.

Mars Base 1

As part of the Astronaut Training Experience Center - Exploring with Lockheed Martin, Mars Base 1 offers students the opportunity to travel to the Red Planet through the Mars Transporter Vehicle for a day and learn to deal with the challenges and difficulties of living on its surface, managing the Base Operations Center on Mars, growing and harvesting plants in the Botany Lab, and collecting and analyzing data to be sent to real NASA scientists. Campers will also be required to program robots to clear debris from solar panels with the aim to optimize energy intake for the Base. It is a unique opportunity for students to understand and learn to adapt to life away from Earth.

How to Attend the Kennedy Space Center Camp?

To attend the Kennedy Space Center Camp, you will be required to call the Reservations Team at 1-855-433-4210 between 9 AM and 5 PM EST and make a booking.

Make sure you select the age group based on your camper’s birth date. The selection of the wrong age group will result in the cancellation of your Camp KSC reservation, the notification of which should reach you within 14 days. If you are unable to select your preferred date, then it means that all camp teams or age groups for that particular week are sold out. If you can’t find your camp team or age group listed for a specific week, then it’s probably sold out for that week.

The booking includes lunch and snacks every day, a specially designed Camp KSC t-shirt, a Camp KSC certificate, a themed name badge and lanyard, electronic follow-up reports, and wristbands for four family members giving them access to explore the Visitor Complex after the last day of camp.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Kennedy Space Center Camp

The Kennedy Space Center hosts a 5-day summer camp every year for students between 7-16 years of age where they offer hands-on STEM challenges and activity-based learning.

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