The Museum of Science is partnering with the video game company Roblox on a new experience designed to help students learn about space.
The digital experience is part of a grant being made by the new Roblox Community Fund, an initiative launched this week bringing educational experiences to the company's gaming platform.
It will be based on Destination Mars: The New Frontier, a planetarium show and set of educational materials developed by the Charles Hayden Planetarium team, the museum's EiE curricula division, and NASA.
“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 in a statement. “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 museum has set a goal of reaching 100 million people in museums, classrooms and online by 2030, recently launching platforms for people at home and students as well as hiring its first-ever chief digital officer.
"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," said the museum's chief learning officer Christine Reich.
The Roblox experience will launch some time in 2022, the museum said.
