On Tuesday, the Museum got a visit from some of the stars of its newest exhibition.

NASA astronauts Michael Massimino and John Grunsfeld, crew members on mission STS-125 to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, joined Curator Michael Shara for a Q&A in the Cullman Hall of the Universe on Tuesday, November 15. The astronauts’ repair mission is featured in one of the dioramas of the Museum’s special exhibition Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration, which opens Saturday, November 19, and is curated by Dr. Shara.

Coming to the Museum over the holiday weekend? Remember to stop by the Museum’s Rose Center for Earth and Space on 81st Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West for a unique type of space show. Bright green waves of laser light will ripple across the Hayden Sphere from 5 to 11 pm every evening until Sunday, November 27, to illustrate how the Hubble Space Telescope analyzes distant galaxies, quasars, and other celestial objects in the universe—and to mark the opening of Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration, the Museum’s latest special exhibition.

Tomorrow, a producer with Science Bulletins, the Museum’s online and exhibition program, begins a seven-day journey to the South Pole to document the work of a research team working with the largest-ever telescope deployed in Antarctica.

Imagine a mirror as wide as a football field at the South Pole of the Moon. Instead of polished glass, its surface is made of a reflective liquid, which spins in a circle.

Scientists hope to make this vision into a reality one day by using a liquid mirror to build a giant lunar telescope that would allow astronomers to see farther into the universe than ever before. In the Museum’s special exhibition Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration, visitors can see two liquid mirror telescopes: one featured as part of a Moonscape diorama, the other, an interactive model that can be operated with the push of a button.

Below, astrophysicist Michael Shara, who curated the forthcoming exhibition Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration, explains how a lunar elevator would work—and why it might inspire a new sport.

We humans are barely toddlers when it comes to space exploration. Our first baby steps off our home planet 50 years ago took us to low Earth orbit. By 1973, 12 intrepid men had walked on the moon’s surface. Since then we have sent robots to every planet in our solar system. The Hubble Space Telescope has shown us that the ordinary matter we are made of comprises only 4 percent of the mass of the universe. The Kepler orbiting telescope has proved that billions of worlds orbit the stars of our Milky Way galaxy. What will we accomplish in space in the coming centuries, as our steps become surer and bolder?