The National Space Centre is one of the United Kingdom’s leading visitor attractions that is devoted to space science and astronomy. It is located in the city of Leicester, England, The centre arose from a partnership between the University of Leicester’s Space Research Centre and local government agencies. The total construction cost was £52m, £26m of which came from a Millennium Commission grant, and the rest from private sector sponsors. It is run as an educational charity, and offers science workshops for school children of all ages. The Centre has on display the only known Soyuz spacecraft in Western Europe (in the United States, another Soyuz spacecraft is at the Smithsonian Institution as part of their Apollo-Soyuz Test Project display).
The centre has six main galleries of exhibits and visitor activities covering space flight, astronomy and cosmology. The attraction also includes a Digistar 3 dome cinema and planetarium, a gift shop and a restaurant. The restaurant is situated beneath the two nozzles of the Blue Streak and PGM-17 Thor rockets.