A new US$30m (23m euro, £19m) science museum and visitor attraction has opened at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, US.

The 72,000sq ft (6,700sq m) INFINITY Science Center houses a number of interactive exhibits and educational galleries on earth and space – including ones that examine the work of NASA and Mississippi's important contributions to space exploration.

The ground floor will be dominated by the Earth Gallery, which includes the Global Patterns exhibit, recreating the various cycles and patterns that characterize Earth as a system; and the Deep Ocean Lab, where visitors will be able to use technology to make a 3D map of the floor of a large water tank.

Other spaces will include the Great Nations Dare to Explore gallery, a 4,000sq ft (372sq m) maze that will give visitors the opportunity to explore their way from early Egypt to a future that could see colonies established on Mars and the moon.

Fred Haise, an astronaut who travelled on Apollo 13, is one of many NASA staff to have worked on INFINITY.

"The goal for INFINITY is to engage and educate," Haise said. "Most have heard of Kennedy Space Center or Johnson Space Center because those are where we have launched and commanded space missions.

"But Stennis Space Center is where this nation perfected the engines that got us into space. I bet most of America does not know that the largest rocket test facility in the United States is right here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and has been since the 1960s.

"We have the world's largest oceanographic science and research contingency right here, too."

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