Half of a century ago, NASA successfully completed the historical Apollo 11 moon landing mission, which served as a catalyst for space exploration worldwide. Here in Mullica Hill, the library is teaching lessons of Apollo, and space, through a three-part series.
From June to July, the Mullica Hill Branch Library has been hosting events to show people how the moon landing happened. On July 11 at 2 p.m., which will be the final part in the series, the library will welcome Astrophysicist David Klassen of Rowan University to talk about space exploration.
The event is free and open to the public. No registration is needed to attend.
“[He’ll] talk about his study on Mars, which is the next step in destination for NASA,” said Erica Moon, adult services librarian. “That’s their goal. It’s to go from the moon to Mars. Klassen will be talking in layman’s terms about what that’s going to look like.”
Moon said the library brought in the NASA program after the entity has been aggressively promoting the moon landing’s 50th anniversary with live streams of the landing and hosting an array of educational resources on its websites for curious minds to sift through.
“We wanted to offer it to the public and it can of course be viewed from home, but it’s more fun when you can view it on a big screen,” Moon said. “It gets people of like-minded interests together.”
The library will also have a movie night on July 18, showing “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
At the July 11 event, Moon said attendees will be able to ask Klassen questions about NASA, Apollo 11 and himself. She added the library expects a good turnout as the past three events have had a sizable crowd.
Coincidentally, the Apollo 11 anniversary also falls within the library’s summer reading program “A Universe of Stories.” The program is a nationwide initiative to teach elementary-aged kids about space.
“We have a video streaming service – Kanopy – and some documentaries about Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and many other astronauts after them,” Moon added.
Events at the library, she added, will try to incorporate the summer reading program, especially children’s events.
Klassen’s segment in the event is a part of the library’s series “Up Close and Personal with…” where they invite locals from various industry fields to speak to attendees about their expertise. Moon added in September, the library will have 6ABC’s meteorologist Chris Sowers to talk about weather.
To learn more about the library’s upcoming summer reading events, visit www.GCLS.org/Calendar/Mullica-Hill.
