Orlando’s ties to the nation’s space program helped land one of the Smithsonian Institution’s newest immersive experiences at The Florida Mall, where visitors soon will be able to walk through galaxies, black holes and exploding stars using virtual reality technology built from real telescope data.
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Smithsonian Starstruck: An Immersive Experience, a permanent exhibit, opens June 25 at Fever’s venue inside The Florida Mall, transforming a 5,000-square-foot space into a free-roam journey through the cosmos. Guests wearing virtual reality headsets will spend about 40 minutes exploring celestial phenomena recreated from observations gathered by some of the world’s most powerful telescopes.
“It’s basically a documentary, a space documentary that you can walk around inside of and touch things,” said Elliott Mizroch, a producer and director on Fever’s New Ventures team who helped oversee the project. Based in New York City, Fever is a tech-enabled entertainment platform and original content creator, partnering with major entities to produce immersive experiences, such as the popular Candlelight Concert series.
The attraction was developed through a partnership between Fever, the Smithsonian Institution and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which worked with the production team for two years.
Orlando was selected as one of the experience’s early launch markets in part because of the region’s longstanding connection to space exploration.
“Orlando is a space mecca,” Mizroch told GrowthSpotter, citing the area’s proximity to Kennedy Space Center and growing public interest surrounding NASA’s Artemis program.
The local opening follows the attraction’s debut in Washington, D.C., and precedes a broader rollout to cities around the world. Fever already operated a venue at The Florida Mall, allowing the company to bring the new content to Orlando without expanding its footprint here.
Mizroch said the production team collaborated directly with astrophysicists to create scenes based on data from the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories. During the experience, visitors are guided by a narrator through interactive encounters exploring the life cycle of stars, the structure of galaxies and the nature of black holes.
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According to Mizroch, roughly 50 people contributed to the project, which grew out of a Smithsonian request for proposals seeking new ways to engage audiences with science and education.
The collaboration represented a departure from many of the immersive experiences Mizroch has worked on previously. His past projects recreated destinations such as Machu Picchu, Petra and ancient Egyptian tombs using digital scanning technology. Starstruck required the team to build environments based on astronomical observations rather than physical locations.
“We were depicting the cosmos, but it’s not a place we can go visit,” he said.
While the experience is rooted in scientific research, Mizroch said, “You don’t really need to have any prior space experience. Anybody who’s ever had any interest in what’s up there above us will enjoy this.”
That said, the experience has also resonated with some of the scientific community’s leading experts. Mizroch recalled that astrophysicist Dr. Laura Brennan, one of the world’s foremost black hole researchers, became emotional after seeing the finished project for the first time. According to Mizroch, Brennan said “the experience transformed the complex streams of data scientists spend their careers studying into something the public can finally see, understand and share.”
For researchers accustomed to working with abstract numbers and observations, he said, the ability to walk through those discoveries and make them accessible to a broader audience is deeply meaningful.
Tickets for Smithsonian Starstruck are now on sale, priced at $29.00 for adults 18+ and $24 for children and seniors. The experience opens June 25 at The Florida Mall and is recommended for ages 10 and older.
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