A South African design team has helped bring a new space experience to life in the United States. It’s getting families, kids and science fans excited about STEM!
Cape Town, South Africa (24 November 2025) – Our eyes have been fixed on the skies these past few weeks with the Leonid meteor shower, rare comets, the biggest full moon of the year, and sights of the Aurora Australis in SA.
But exciting things have also been happening on the ground!
Mother City-based experience design firm formula D_ recently partnered with the Kirby Science Discovery Center in Sioux Falls in the US to launch Space Explorers: Mission Infinity.
The exhibit is a full, modern reimagining of the space and technology section of the museum. It’s interactive, playful and built to make science resonate with young and curious minds. Visitors can build rockets, step onto Mars, scan deep space and explore how people might live beyond Earth one day.
“What excites us about Mission Infinity is how it came together,” says Michael Wolf, co-CEO of formula D_. “The story-led experience relied on collaboration between museum designers, engineers, educators, a real astronaut, and the Kirby Science Center team to shape something meaningful for visitors. That kind of process shows where experiential design truly proves its value, translating the complex ideas of space exploration into something relevant and memorable.”
The South African-made exhibit is structured as a journey through five themed zones. Visitors first enter through a dramatic ‘spacewalk’ door, then head to a rocket-launch area before seeing Earth from above, stepping into a Mars habitat, and finally exploring the far reaches of deep space.
One of the highlights is a clever scale exhibit that uses basketballs to represent planets. Earth becomes something you can hold, and Jupiter, scaled correctly, fills almost an entire room. Wolf says this approach helps people, especially children, make sense of big scientific ideas.
“When visitors encounter and grasp physical references in relation to themselves, they start to map relationships with their bodies. This is central to how people, especially children, make sense of complex topics like planetary scale, distance, and mass.”
Mission Infinity is now open to the public in Sioux Falls, with South African design, creativity and engineering steering the way!
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