Flandrau Science Center and Planetarium will celebrate its 50th anniversary on Dec. 13.
To celebrate, they created a temporary exhibit highlighting major milestones along the way and are offering free admission on Dec. 13.
“We want to celebrate our birthday with all of Tucson — no charge,” Nick Letson, Flandrau Science Center and Planetarium’s marketing and communications manager, said. “We want to make sure anybody who wants to come can come — no financial barriers — just stellar educational experiences all day.”
Over the past 5 decades, the building has morphed and evolved. According to Letson, they are at the tail end of renovating every public space in the center. The final renovation will be the “Mysteries of the Cosmos” exhibit coming spring 2026.
“If you were to walk here in 1975 to today, everything would be different, except for our historic glass windows,” Letson said.
However, the central mission — to educate the local community about science — has not changed; it is one that Grace Flandrau, to whom the center and planetarium is dedicated, would be proud of.
Born Grace Hodgson in St. Paul, Minnesota, she spent a large part of her childhood traveling. At the age of 22, she married William Blair Flandrau, an avid traveler and businessman.
Together, they owned a coffee plantation in Vera Cruz, Mexico, where she began writing about her experiences. In 1917, Grace Flandrau published her first novel, “Cousin Julia”. In the years that followed, she published over 60 short stories, countless articles and five other books, three of which were adapted to the silver screen.
After nearly 30 years of marriage, both her husband and brother-in-law died, leaving Grace Flandrau as the sole heir of the Flandrau fortune.
For health reasons, Grace Flandrau moved to Tucson in the early 1940s. In 1960, she bought a house near the Arizona Inn, which she would frequent.
Upon her death in 1971, Grace Flandrau bequeathed more than a third of her $10 million estate to fund Tucson. The Tucson National Council on Crime and Delinquency received $3 million; the University of Arizona received an open-ended donation of $800,000, which would be worth roughly $6.4 million in the present day.
At the time of the donation, the country was coming down from the heights of the Space Race. On July 20, 1969, an estimated 650 million people watched the televised footage of Neil Armstrong becoming the first man to walk on the moon.
The UA played a significant role in the Apollo 11 program. Gerard Kuiper’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory had worked on mapping the surface of the moon, an integral part of the mission’s safe accomplishment.
“We had been part of the effort to get a man on the moon in terms of generating the highly detailed maps that we needed to know where to land, ” Letson said. “Obviously you can’t land on the moon without knowing what’s the best place to land, what’s the safest place to land, what does it look like? The University of Arizona was a big part of that.”
In November 1972, Leicester Scherill, president of the University of Arizona Foundation at the time, announced the plans to begin construction of a 200-seat planetarium, using Flandrau’s donation. At the time, the only existing planetarium in Arizona was the 40-seat facility at Arizona State University.
Just over 3 years later, the Flandrau Planetarium opened.
Roughly one year later, the planetarium hosted its first laser show, a production of Laserium. The Tucson Citizen stated attendees “walked out shaking their heads, obviously moved by what they had seen yet unable to say specifically why.”
In 1989, Edgar McCullough, the UA faculty of science dean, changed the name to the Flandrau Planetarium and Science Center. The concept expanded to include a broader array of scientific disciplines, going beyond the initial focus on space sciences.
The Flandrau Planetarium and Science Center continued to grow and adapt. In 2014, they began a long string of renovations. The facility installed a fulldome system, which included new projectors, software and a sound system.
Through a donation from the Eos Foundation, they installed a new flooring, new seating, acoustic wall treatments, lighting and an assistive hearing system. The newly renovated planetarium opened in August 2017.
“I think every decade has had its unique emphasis,” Letson said. “Certainly in the last 20 years, there has been an emphasis on inspiring future scientists.”
According to their recent report, more than 17,000 students participated in K-12 programs during the 2024-2025 academic year.
The Flandrau Planetarium and Science Center hosts several hands-on exhibits and demos to teach more kids about science in an engaging way, often bringing in UA student employees to help.
“In our bug exhibit, we have some bugs that you can hold. We have blue death feigning beetles. Sometimes kids are like, ‘Ah, it’s a bug. It’s scary,’” Ash Abbate, a Flandrau student employee, said. “But then you hold your hand to it — you show them it’s safe. Kind of working them up to it is always really fun, and they always get really excited whenever they’ve done that.”
Abbate, a fourth-year geology student, has worked there for over 3 years. Initially starting as a telescope operator, they held several different roles throughout their tenure.
“Anytime you’re on the floor, you interact with a lot of kids,” Abbate said. “There are some times where you just get to see their face light up, and that’s probably the most fun time that I get to have working on the floor, because the kids just get so excited about the different things.”
For Abbate, one of the most meaningful experiences has been drawing kids into science and letting them discover the lesser-known fields of science.
“I think just having the opportunity to tell people, ‘Hey, this other path for you exists,’ is always really entertaining and really interesting to me,” Abbate said. “If I hadn’t taken a gen ed just out of pure coincidence, I don’t think I would have found the passion that I did. Getting that different kind of exposure and getting kids interested in all kinds of different things can really help.”
Over the past 50 years, the facility has grown and evolved. According to Letson, they plan to continue hosting events with the aim of involving the community and collaborating with new presenters.
“We don’t know what kind of exhibits we’ll have in 5 years,” Letson said. “That’s kind of the fun of it. We go where our curiosity takes us and where we think the community’s curiosity will be.”
“We’re kind of like the state’s flagship planetarium,” Letson said. “I just think how much Tucson would be missing without the Flandrau Science Center and Planetarium — in terms of a gathering place for solar eclipses or unique and immersive science lectures. I’m just so happy we’re here and so proud to be a part of this educational resource.”
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