The DLR Space Show on June 7, 2019, in Erfurt’s Steigerwald Stadium was the world’s largest science show of all time. This has now been confirmed by the Guinness Book of Records. On this day, 15,966 schoolchildren watched the stage presentation by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), which also featured the German ESA astronauts Ulf Merbold and Alexander Gerst.
The new world record surpasses the previous record – set at an event in Birmingham, England, where some 11,000 people attended. The record-breaking event in Erfurt, which was held in cooperation with the local youth initiative “Förderverein Spiel- und Freizeitplätze der Generationen”, was the kick-off for a Germany-wide tour with which DLR was able to get a total of 56,000 children and young people enthusiastic about space travel and thus about research and technology last year. The DLR Space Show was an interactive stage presentation that was performed at numerous locations throughout Germany in 2018 and 2019 – partly in the assembly halls of schools, partly in large city halls.
The moderation team led through a program of amazing stage experiments, fascinating videos and hall actions in which the audience was allowed to participate. Hundreds of children counted the countdown at the top of their voices, recreated the solar system with large glowing spheres as planets or marveled at how a chocolate kiss bloated under a vacuum bell.
The DLR presentation took the audience on a “thought journey to the moon”, before Ulf Merbold and Alexander Gerst, two astronauts, reported first-hand about their experiences in space. Gerst also associated a very personal memory with the event: when he was on the ISS the year before, 1,500 schoolchildren had gathered in the Erfurt stadium and formed the lettering “HALLO ALEX”. The photo was sent by DLR to the ESA astronaut, who retaliated via Twitter with “Thank you Erfurt! With his appearance in the Steigerwald Stadium, he kept his promise to thank the astronaut for the greetings on site.
The DLR Space Show, which was performed in 2018 and 2019 together in front of more than 80,000 young spectators, was a campaign of DLR’s promotion of young talent. It complemented many other offers for schools such as the DLR student labs, the so-called DLR_School_Labs, or the DLR youth portal DLR_next
A recording of the DLR_Raumfahrt_Show can be seen on YouTube:
Source: German Aerospace Center (DLR)