Things to do during Space Week at Expo 2020 Dubai: Listen to space tunes, stargaze and touch the moon

Space Week took off at Expo 2020 Dubai on Sunday, with visitors able to experience a packed calendar of planetary-themed entertainment till October 23, featuring nebula music, star-gazing and immersive experiences. Pepper your interstellar journey with out-of-the-orbit country pavilions where space is the focus.

Until October 23, Al Wasl Plaza dome – the world’s largest 360-degree projection surface – will host an audio-visual show ‘Cosmos’. Fly into space and journey through the stars, as planets zoom past seemingly within touching distance. The 15-minute immersive experience, repeated at various times throughout the week, is sure to intrigue and inspire audiences to learn more about the universe around them. Timings – October 17: 9.10pm; October 18: 7.45pm, 11.05pm; October 19: 11.05pm; October 20: 9.45pm; October 21: 7.45pm, 11.50pm; October 22: 1.10am; October 23: 1.10am.

On Sunday, October 17, Italy’s Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale dei Conservatori Italiani is performing film soundtracks by composers Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota, set to projections of satellite images taken from space, for a magical evening entitled ‘The Music of the Spheres’. Timings – 8.30 to 9.30pm at Dubai Millennium Amphitheatre.

Chilean pop artist Flangr will visit Expo for three special shows during the week. This creative singer writes music developed from unusual space sounds coded from the Orion Nebula as captured by the Observatory ALMA. Timings – October 17: 7.30pm on Jubilee Stage; October 19: 7.30pm on Sea Stage in the Mobility District; October 21: 3pm on Jubilee Stage.

The Sun Stage in the Opportunity District is hosting a musical theatre performance called ‘The Sun! The Star!’, which places the sun at the heart of the show, making it the star, quite literally. Timings – October 19 at 5 and 6pm; October 20: 6 and 7pm; October 21: 5.30 and 6.30pm.

The France Pavilion in the Mobility District is hosting ‘Stargazing Nights’ on its esplanade – no registration is required. Each 90-minute show promises to transport audiences into a deep-space exploration of galaxies and nebulae, with colours and detail courtesy of Unistellar’s ground-breaking telescope. Timings – October 20 to 22: 6.30pm.

Taste space in a futuristic banquet laid out by Bompas & Parr at the Opportunity District. The Future of Food: Epochal Banquet is a two-hour dinner show with odd culinary delights from the lightest dessert in the world to flavour-changing chips – all in the pleasant company of artificial intelligence. Lunch and dinner spreads are limited to three shows a day, and booking is required through the Expo official website or app. Timings – 1, 6 and 9pm.

If you are a believer of extra-terrestrial lifeforms, then a stopover at the UK Pavilion is a must, where you can leave them a message. Just like Stephen Hawking’s ‘Breakthrough Message’ initiative, the pavilion is on a mission to encapsulate humanity for a hypothetical message to the aliens. Donate a word into the choral space and watch artificial intelligence string it into a poetry on the façade. Be sure to snap a picture because it is an ever-changing piece of literature.

Top off your space voyage with a literal grab for the moon. The smooth, pebble-like stone inside the US Pavilion is no earth-dwelling rock – it is a lunar rock and you can touch it. Outside, visitors can dine under a towering scale-by-scale replica of the Space X Falcon 9 rocket.

If you’ve always wondered about what astronauts see up there, head over to the France Pavilion to get a realistic perspective. An imitation of a space shuttle window shows you how it would be like to look back on Earth from the orbit. And it replicates the exact size so your out-of-this-world thrill is absolutely real.

Space Week, the second of 10 Theme Weeks running throughout the six months of Expo, will present an array of content, discussions and more that will probe the benefits, solutions and challenges of exploring beyond our planet’s orbit and include everything from high-level discussions to a chat with two of the UAE’s first astronauts – the first Emirati woman astronaut Nora Al Matrooshi and the first Emirati in space Hazzaa Al Mansoori.