Tampa's Museum of Science & Innovation is turning its North Tampa campus into a week-long celebration of the cosmos, with Space Week running October 4 through October 10 and wrapping up with a Friday night SkyWatch session under the open sky. The event invites families, space enthusiasts and curious minds of every age to dig into hands-on activities, interactive challenges and planetarium experiences built around space exploration and astronomy.
According to Tampa Bay 28, the museum's daily lineup includes demonstrations, space-themed crafts and experiments, alongside special planetarium shows scheduled throughout the week. The event runs through the week, with programming each day. Located at 4801 E. Fowler Ave. in North Tampa, the museum has built the week around giving guests of all ages something to do.
What's Actually Happening Each Day
Space Week features hands-on science, space-themed crafts and experiments, giving younger visitors a tangible way to explore space.
At its inaugural Space Week a year earlier, the museum included a scavenger hunt and a walk-through cardboard space colony. That first Space Week, held October 4-10, 2025, featured new space-themed activities each day.
A Friday Night Under the Stars
Space Week concludes with a SkyWatch event on Friday, giving attendees the opportunity to observe and learn about the night sky. It's a fitting finale for a week built around getting people to look up — and it echoes the format MOSI used the previous year, when its SkyWatch stargazing sessions ran with astronomers on hand from 8 to 10 p.m.
MOSI's Saunders Planetarium gives visitors another way to explore astronomy.
Space Week now has a larger indoor astronomy venue: MOSI reopened its eight-story dome in 2025 with 10 digital projectors, and the Saunders Planetarium moved into the theater. The new space can host more than 300 people per show, up from 46 in the former planetarium. MOSI President and CEO John Graydon Smith said attendance rose 40% in the dome’s first year, putting the attraction at the center of the museum’s recent growth. The museum’s announcement of the dome’s first-year results also tied the venue to expanded school programs and new exhibits.
Part of a Bigger Space Push
The inaugural Space Week in 2025 included Dr. Mackenna Wood, an astrophysicist who directed the Saunders Planetarium and Digital Dome Theatre. Before joining MOSI, Wood conducted postdoctoral research at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research; her academic background includes a doctorate in physics and astronomy. Wood brought key leadership and research expertise to MOSI.
Space Week isn't an isolated event on MOSI's calendar. The museum also organized an Artemis II Launch Watch Party planned for April 1, 2026, at 5:30 p.m., offering three distinct ways to catch the moment: NASA's broadcast projected onto the Digital Dome Theatre screen, an outdoor viewing area staffed by MOSI astronomers, and a VIP vantage point atop the museum's dome. That event, like Space Week, was built around interactive space-themed stations meant to draw in guests of all ages.
The astronomy emphasis is part of a broader institutional shift. MOSI began in 1962 as the Museum of Science and Natural History in Sulphur Springs, moved to North Tampa in 1980 and adopted the Museum of Science & Industry name in 1982. In early 2026, it announced the Museum of Science & Innovation name and opened 30,000 square feet of classroom and lab space, designed to let it serve four times as many school field-trip students and school-break campers annually. MOSI’s history and current mission trace that evolution from a local museum to a regional science and innovation center.
Together, the programming reflects a museum leaning further into astronomy as a signature draw, pairing big-format planetarium technology with the kind of hands-on crafts and experiments that keep younger visitors engaged. For Tampa families looking to fill a week of after-school hours or a weekend outing, Space Week offers a full slate of options before the week wraps with eyes turned skyward on Friday night.
