COOL SPACE ITEMS LAND DOWNTOWN.

Byline: JIM SKEEN Staff Writer

PALMDALE - A former jury assembly room at the Palmdale Civic Center has been transformed into an exhibit hall that NASA and city officials hope will educate the public and inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers and explorers.

Beginning today, the public can visit the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center's Aerospace Exploration Gallery at the former courthouse at Ninth Street East and Avenue Q-10.

``It's a place for people to gather for special events and a place for NASA to tell its story,'' said Dryden Director Kevin Peterson. ``It's a good venue. I'm hoping the community will take advantage of it.''

The gallery will be open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. today and Sunday before it goes to its regular schedule of 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays.

The first exhibits of the gallery include a full-scale model of a Mars rover, the cockpit of an AV-8 Harrier jet, the tail of an F-86 Sabre jet, a small wind tunnel, and a model of the unmanned X-43 hypersonic aircraft. Other exhibits include a jet nozzle from a SR-71 Blackbird spyplane, a model of a F-16, and a spacesuit.

The gallery features a small office area that looks like a building, adorned with a wind sock, that might have been found on the flight line back in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Inside the office is a diorama depicting a woman known as a ``computer'' working on flight data.

In Dryden's early days, women took raw data from aircraft instrumentation devices and made computations to turn out usable information of such factors as speed, fuel consumption, and the aircraft's center of gravity. The women were treated as junior engineers both in the tasks they were assigned and in their working relationship with the male engineers.

NASA is leasing the office space for $1 a year, but is picking up the tab for operations and maintenance costs. The transformation was conducted primarily by NASA workers and with just a few hundred dollars for materials, said Fred Johnson, director of public affairs for the NASA center at Edwards Air Force Base.

Artifacts in the gallery are a mix of things that have been in storage, items that were scavenged, and items on loan, such as the Mars rover model, which is on loan from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The AV-8 cockpit, for example, was retrieved from the China Lake Naval Warfare Center near Ridgecrest where it had apparently been used for target practice.

``It was a case of, gee, it's neat and it's available,'' Johnson said.

Johnson said the gallery's hours are limited now because there is a small cadre of available docents to staff it. The operating hours will expand in the future.

The gallery is a separate project from the former courthouse's primary tenant, the AERO Institute, but the two entities are expecting to work collaboratively on programs.

The AERO Institute is a consortium involving NASA, the city of Palmdale, and academia, as a base for its operations to promote science and technology education.

james.skeen(at)dailynews

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CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo: (1 -- color) Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford, left, and NASA Dryden's Kevin Petersen look in the cockpit of an AV-8 Harrier jet.

(2) The NASA Aerospace Exploration Gallery opens today, with regular hours of 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays.

(3) Sure to be one of the most popular exhibits is this full-scale model of a Mars rover. NASA hopes to inspire boys and girls to become the astronauts and engineers of the future.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer