Space Travelium TeNQ

Space Travelium TeNQ is an indoor attraction about space travel at Tokyo Dome City in Bunkyo, Tokyo. Exhibits, a free-roaming VR experience, galleries, a classroom, a cafe and a shop are spread over ten areas, several of them named after the stages of a trip into space.

History

The facility succeeds Space Museum TeNQ, which ran for eight years, and keeps the TeNQ part of its name. Space Travelium is a coined word for a place where the space travel of the future can be enjoyed. In TeNQ, the TeN stands for three Japanese words read ten: sky (天), exhibition (展) and point (点). The Q stands for quest, question and curiosity, among other words.

Hitoshi Murayama, a professor at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) at the University of Tokyo, is the general supervisor. He advises on the space exhibits and gives special lectures in the education program, mostly online.

The areas

The Entrance is presented as the gateway to space, and the Standby Room as the place to get ready before departure. The Space Terminal is styled as the travel center of a spaceport. Its hands-on exhibits cover space and the travel of the future through sight, touch, sound and smell.

A special exhibition area looks at a different space topic for each show. The Satellite Gallery presents products and projects by companies and organizations working in space. Along the Docking Road, visitors look for space items and gallery pieces that match their own interests.

The Tankyu Room (探究ルーム) is a room for inquiry-based learning through science and art. On weekdays anyone can use it for crafts or reading. On weekends it hosts paid short courses on astronauts, space development and life beyond Earth, and an art program in which participants build a shared work from cardboard and paint.

The TeNQ Space Store is the museum shop. It sells star and planet goods, stationery, space food, clothing, TeNQ's own products and goods for the current exhibition.

SORAVEL LINE

SORAVEL LINE is the VR area. Visitors wear a head-mounted display and walk freely through the space instead of sitting. The program, THE MOON CRUISE, lasts about 20 minutes and runs in Japanese or English. It begins with a rocket flight past views of Earth. On the Moon, visitors walk the surface, watch sky events that can only be seen from there and take photos to download afterwards. A guide called the Butler, voiced by Yuichiro Umehara, leads the trip.

One VR session is included with each admission ticket. Children under 7 and anyone 110 cm tall or shorter cannot take part. Children aged 7 to 12 need a guardian aged 18 or over and a signed parental consent form. The VR terms also set rules on shoes, clothing and hairstyles.

LOUNGE Q

LOUNGE Q is a cafe and lounge in an immersive room surrounded by images of starry skies and nebulae. It has a bookshelf of titles about space and stars, a fortune-telling display, drawing with light and puzzles. A video program of about 30 minutes shows the night sky, nebulae and the bodies of the solar system to music, in four parts. One part uses images selected by Hitoshi Murayama, and another shows the seasons in the sky over Achi village in Nagano. A Japanese audio guide in which Murayama explains his images is sold at the cafe.

TeNQ CAFE 138 serves original drinks and sweets on space and star themes. The 138 refers to the roughly 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang. The cafe is for TeNQ visitors only, and its food and drinks stay inside LOUNGE Q.