The Cité de l'espace is a theme park in the southern French city of Toulouse, Europe's aerospace capital.
The Cité de l'espace is a major attraction in Toulouse and opened in 1997. It is a mixture of theme park and adventure park. A lot of interesting facts about the solar system, satellites and the youngest space station are presented and some of them can be tried out.
The exact replica of the Ariane 5, which is 55 meters high like the real rocket, can be seen from afar. Ariane dominates the 3.5 hectare park with 2000 m² of exhibition space.
In the main exhibition building, the development of space conquest can be discovered and the progress of research can be followed. Interactive systems vividly show how satellites are built and deployed, how weather forecasting works, how telecommunications make life easier and how the pioneers of all these areas made their inventions. Models of Mir modules show the everyday life of the astronauts in detail.
The main attractions include an IMAX cinema with a film made by the astronauts of the ISS, a planetarium and a hemisphere in which you can travel back in time thanks to a three-dimensional video projection and follow the development of the earth from the Big Bang to the present.