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The Sunday Times Travel 10 Apr 2026

I spent the weekend at Alabama's astronaut training camp — and you can too

For The Sunday Times, science-nerd Tracey blasted off to Alabama's US Space & Rocket Center for two nights of adult Space Camp — bratwurst in the crew galley, satellite repairs in a shuttle mock-up, and one very disorienting multi-axis trainer.

Saturn V rocket launch — Apollo 11, evocative of Alabama's Space Camp heritage.
Wikimedia Commons — NASA (restored by Michel Vuijlsteke)

For The Sunday Times, self-confessed space geek Tracey took herself to Huntsville, Alabama — birthplace of America's space race — for a two-night residential at adult Space Camp. Sleeping in a windowless ISS-mimicking pod, she spent three days on rocketry workshops, teamwork drills and full mission simulations, captained a mock space shuttle back to Earth ("The Eagle has landed"), and — after Christina Koch's Artemis II flyby launched days earlier — wondered whether her own giant leap for womankind might still be out there. From £597pp full board.

Read the original on The Sunday Times →