The Museum of Science and Roblox today announced they will launch a new experience on the Roblox platform where students become astronauts enabling a journey to Mars. Based on Destination Mars: The New Frontier – an immersive set of educational materials and planetarium show created by the Museum’s Charles Hayden Planetarium team, the Museum’s EiE® curricula division, and NASA – the experience will provide Roblox’s 47.3M+ daily users the opportunity to explore the International Space Station, the surface of the Moon, and an imagined Mars settlement and science laboratory.
“The Roblox partnership is a quantum leap toward the Museum of Science’s goal of meeting everyone, everywhere, to develop a lifelong love of science,” said Museum of Science President Tim Ritchie. “For kids of all ages, role-playing as astronauts sparks a lifelong relationship with STEM that might take them places they – or we – can only dream of today.”
The partnership is an extension of the Museum’s aspirations to reach 100 million people in museums, classrooms and online by 2030, breaking down barriers to engagement and creating greater equity in STEM. Other Museum efforts include the “MOS at Home” platform that reached more than 1M people during the pandemic, “MOS at School” virtual field trips that will reach more than 100,000 students, and the hiring of the Museum’s first-ever Chief Digital Officer.
The new Mars digital experience is made possible as one of three initial grants of the Roblox Community Fund, launching today as a philanthropic initiative to bring new high-quality educational experiences to Roblox.
“A journey to outer space that allows students to explore, plan, and problem-solve as scientists epitomizes the type of teaching and learning we are excited to see on Roblox,” said Roblox Head of Education Rebecca Kantar. “And there’s no one better suited to lead students on an extraterrestrial science mission than the Museum of Science. With the support of the Roblox Community Fund, the Museum of Science will offer an inspiring example of what Next Generation Science Standard-aligned learning experiences on Roblox can be like. We are thrilled to partner with the Museum of Science in reaching millions of current and soon-to-be lovers of science.”
The experience will be developed in alignment with the Museum’s award-winning approach to high quality, research-based experience design and content. Students will design the infrastructure to solve challenges and conduct experiments that enable the journey to Mars, and through the process, will understand how scientists and engineers are staging for an increasing human presence in space.
With access to EiE®, the Museum’s interactive engineering and computer science curriculum, students will practice STEM habits of mind, particularly those connected to engineering design process and scientific inquiry. Students will employ Next Generation Science Standard Practices and Skills as they learn and explore as scientists in space.
“We are thrilled to partner with Roblox to advance our shared commitment to learning that is fun and engaging,” said the Museum’s Chief Learning Officer, Christine Reich, Ph.D. “We’ve done this work in museums and classrooms for years, and this new partnership with Roblox allows us to reach exponentially more children in ways that enable them to directly experience their potential as future scientists and engineers.”
The new experience is anticipated to launch in 2022.
About Roblox
Roblox’s mission is to build a human co-experience platform that enables shared experiences among billions of users. Every day, tens of millions of people around the world have fun with friends as they explore millions of immersive digital experiences. All of these experiences are built by the Roblox community, made up of over eight million creators. We believe in building a safe, civil, and diverse community—one that inspires and fosters creativity and positive relationships between people around the world. For more information, please visit corp.roblox.com.
About the Museum of Science
Among the world’s largest science centers, and one of New England’s most attended cultural institution, the Museum of Science engages millions of people per year around the world with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) through interactive exhibits, programs, planetarium productions and preK-8 EiE® STEM curricula through the William and Charlotte Bloomberg Science Education Center. Established in 1830, the Museum is home to such iconic exhibits as the Thomson Theater of Electricity, the Charles Hayden Planetarium, and the Mugar Omni Theater. The Museum influences formal and informal STEM education through research and national advocacy, as a strong community partner and loyal educator resource, and as a leader in universal design, developing exhibits and programming accessible to all. Learn more at mos.org.
