Te Rangi Atea – Beyond the Skies

In November 2024, Tūhura Otago Museum's Outreach and Education team took the showcase Tūhura Tuarangi – Aotearoa in Space to Mangaia in the Cook Islands in support of their Science Expo, Te Rangi Atea – Beyond the Skies.

We received funding from the US Embassy to attend the event. Many other NGOs attended the expo, which was run by the Cook Islands Climate Change Office. In addition to our Tūhura Tuarangi showcase, we also hosted a livestream with scientists in Antarctica, screened the NASA film Good Night Oppy, developed and presented a spotlight on the Cook Islands' own STEM icon, Sir Thomas Davis, and set up our portable star lab planetarium! We engaged with over 800 people and had an awesome time building relationships and inspiring the next generation of STEM professionals!

We had lots of fun launching rockets, learning about satellites, investigating meteorites with the Microeye and learning about new technologies such as hydrogen propulsion.

As part of this project, we also created the Papa Tom display. It summarises the life and achievements of Sir Thomas Davis, who was from the Cook Islands. He became a doctor and the chief medical officer for the Cook Islands, was the first Pacific person to attend Harvard for postgraduate studies, and then went on to do medical research for NASA and the US Army. He became the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands and revitalised the Pacific voyaging movement. The Sir Thomas Davis Indigenous Innovation and Inspiration display was donated to Te Ara – Cook Islands Museum and is pictured on display below. This display will be able to continue to inspire community members long into the future.

Also donated was a celestial navigation interactive (also pictured above). It showcases how stars rise and set, and how stars can be used with traditional knowledge systems to navigate a waka through the vast Pacific Ocean.