When employ­ees at the Den­ver Muse­um of Nature & Sci­ence began think­ing about a space-sci­ence exhib­it two decades ago, humans had just moved into the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, paving the way for fur­ther explo­ration of the solar system.

But in the 17 years since the museum’s “Space Odyssey” first opened — fol­low­ing three years of plan­ning and con­struc­tion — humans have large­ly stepped back from vis­it­ing our clos­est celes­tial neigh­bors (thanks, robots!). Mean­while, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and faster proces­sors have chipped away at the secret domain of black holes and gravi­ton waves. And advances in physics at the small­est lev­el have pro­vid­ed insight on large-scale mys­ter­ies such as dark ener­gy and dark mat­ter.

How does one trans­late that into an enter­tain­ing, kid-friend­ly experience?

“One of the major changes for us was going to the com­mu­ni­ty and find­ing out what they want­ed in a space-sci­ence gallery,” said Nao­mi Pequette, pro­gram spe­cial­ist at the Den­ver Muse­um of Nature & Sci­ence. “Peo­ple want­ed to know not only new dis­cov­er­ies and facts, but also how we found those out.”

As a result, Pequette (also an astro­physi­cist) and space sci­en­tist Steve Lee, Ph.D., start­ed from the ground up, envi­sion­ing themed “knowl­edge orbits” and oth­er inter­ac­tive areas in “Space Odyssey” that could help vis­i­tors under­stand the tools we use to learn about space. In oth­er words: How do we know what we know about the night sky?

“We want to put guests in the spot of mak­ing these dis­cov­er­ies them­selves,” Pequette said of “Space Odyssey,” which reopens to the pub­lic on Fri­day, Nov. 13, after a year-long ren­o­va­tion. “We real­ly want to get these ‘Wow!’ moments happening.”

With a more col­or­ful, spa­cious foot­print, “Space Odyssey” cer­tain­ly feels like a new exhib­it. Muse­um staffers took areas the pub­lic didn’t have access to — most­ly stor­age and class­rooms encir­cling its plan­e­tar­i­um — and increased the over­all gallery size by 30% to rough­ly 10,000 square feet. Now vis­i­tors can vis­it a “fan­ta­sy space­ship,” ground­ed in sci­ence, that imag­ines what space explo­ration could look like in the com­ing years.

There’s also a “full sen­so­ry space­walk” in a near­ly sound­proof envi­ron­ment, shot through with more than 11,000 “stars” using 43 miles of opti­cal fiber to rein­force the illu­sion. Vis­i­tors can make their own “Hub­ble” images of neb­u­lae and galax­ies, or hear “tra­di­tion­al and liv­ing indige­nous knowl­edge of the night sky and Earth ori­gins.” And they can pro­gram a robot in a Mars dio­ra­ma using a sim­pli­fied ver­sion of the same soft­ware sci­en­tists use to con­trol real Mar­t­ian rovers.

“Hav­ing inter­net-con­nect­ed devices in the gallery was the big, shiny thing when we first opened,” Pequette said with a laugh. “So we real­ly thought about, ‘What unique things can we pro­vide now that you can’t find on your own, and that you have to vis­it us to experience?’ ”

The fea­tures aren’t all new. A pop­u­lar, tod­dler-focused dress-up area (Astro Tots) is back — albeit idle until pan­dem­ic restric­tions lift — and the area is more “bright and whim­si­cal to appeal to kids’ sense of imag­i­na­tion and play,” Pequette said. Vis­i­tors can still attempt to dock a space­craft (updat­ed from the now-defunct shut­tle pro­gram) and make the biggest, messi­est mete­or crater impact.

“Our guests real­ly just want­ed to make craters in sand,” Pequette said of the com­mu­ni­ty feed­back for the exhib­it. “It’s so sat­is­fy­ing to see that love­ly pat­tern of ejec­ta on the out­side and watch it on a high-speed cam­era. You’ll still get that fan­tas­tic, sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence; it’ll just a look a lit­tle bit bet­ter and be more sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly accurate.”

Because it was designed pre-pan­dem­ic, some of the more inter­ac­tive fea­tures will have to wait.

“The vast major­i­ty is up and run­ning, although one inter­ac­tive we will have to deploy lat­er is where you smell the uni­verse,” Pequette said. “We don’t want guests to take down their masks to do that, but we’ll still present the awe­some sci­ence of that. It’s designed to be more about self-explo­ration and a vis­i­tor-dri­ven experience.”

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