Space Explorers: The Infinite gives people virtual views of the International Space Station

ATLANTA — Every patch on Shane Kimbrough’s jacket tells a story. The Georgia Tech graduate and retired Army colonel always had dreams of going to space. 

“When I was a little kid, that shows you how old I am, we were landing on the moon,” Kimbrough said. “So that really inspired not just me but really the entire nation at the time.”

Now, after three missions to the International Space Station, Kimbrough is helping to share that experience with the average person through a special exhibit on the Eastside of Atlanta.

Space Explorers: The Infinite allows one to freely roam a virtual replica of the ISS using virtual reality. Phi Studio and Felix and Paul Studios worked with NASA to turn the everyday life of an astronaut into an out-of-this-world experience without leaving Earth.

“It’s the world’s largest immersive space exhibition,” Rory Seydel, marketing director at Phi Studio, said. “Through the power of virtual reality, you’ll travel 250 miles above Earth to the International Space Station, where you’ll explore a life-size replica. With NASA, we made cameras and we sent them to the space station and recorded over 250 hours of content in space. There are lots of intimate interviews with the astronauts as they go about their work, and it’s quite emotional and awe-inspiring.”

The takeaways for Kimbrough, the NASA astronaut, are perspective and gratitude for the thousands of people who got him to space and back.

“I represent a lot of things, whether it’s the school I went to, or the U.S. Army or the United States of America,” Kimbrough said. “We’re not just doing it for those organizations. We’re doing it for all humankind, all of humanity.”

The exhibition features Christina Koch, one of the four astronauts who flew to space on the Artemis II moon mission. Koch is seen in some of the footage on board and outside the ISS. Space Explorers: The Infinite runs through the summer over at Pullman Yards.