Artemis II exhibit opens for visitors in Dawson Creek

DAWSON CREEK, B.C. — A Dawson Creek local has set up an exhibit about the recently concluded Artemis II space mission. 

The SpaceModel Museum, located in Dawson Creek on 102nd Avenue, boasts “a two and half foot tall model of the Artemis II rocket,” noted Nick Proach, the founder of SpaceModel Museum.

In addition to this, the museum also displays a wall chart showing the flight pattern the Artemis II mission took. 

Proach, who is also the founder of Proach Models,  said: “This goes back to the 1990s, where we put ourselves out as scale model contractors to aerospace companies, NASA, space agencies, museums worldwide and private collectors.” 

Over the years, Proach Models built scale models of anything that flew in space. 

The current model of the Artemis II rocket has been in the collection for 13 years. 

“This model was built for a small display that I had at our former shop,” he said. “We kept the model ever since, and it’s been updated and upgraded, particularly where coloring is concerned, or where surface details are concerned.” 

Proach believes he has brought the model up to “fairly detailed standards” to illustrate the Artemis II rockets.  

“The only real difference between the two was the markings of the NASA worm logo on the solid rocket boosters,” he noted. 

Since opening in 2023, Proach said this is the first time the museum has been publicly advertised or promoted. 

Proach wanted to open the new exhibit to coincide with the actual mission date. The exhibit has been open since the end of January, Proach said. 

“It was ready to go and [it] would have been the latter part of January, because this flight originally was scheduled to lift off on February 6th, but it was delayed because they had a problem with the rocket, which had to be moved back to the assembly building and then brought back out to the pad,” he added. 

Now that the mission is over, Proach hopes to put up pictures of the moon and some of the photos that returned to Earth. 

In addition to the Artemis II model, the museum also includes a large-scale model of the Orion spacecraft, space models from the 1950s to the present, a launch pad, a rocket and spacecraft artifacts, historic moments from the Apollo program and the SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. 

When asked how he got into building space models, Proach said: “I followed the space program since I was seven years old and that goes back to 1961 and 1962 to the flights of Alan Shepard and John Glenn.” 

The SpaceModel Museum has become Proach’s retirement project and he is “loving” every minute of it. 

He said: “I’m really enjoying the people that come through and visit the museum.

“We have a few cases just chock full of scale models that represent the space program anywhere from the 1950s right up to the current day. So we cover the whole history of space flight, manned and unmanned but primarily manned.”

The Dawson Creek community’s reactions, Proach said, have been “very favourable.” 

“People are really impressed there is something very different here and new here,” he noted. “The ones that have come out to see it have been really impressed and really accepting of it. So we’re getting a fantastic reaction from the public.” 

The museum is open Tuesday to Thursday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m., and on other days entry to the museum is by appointment. 

To visit the museum, it is admission by donation, which Proach said will be used for the museum and programs it wants to bring to the public, particularly for students. 

“What we’re really concentrating on is how we can serve the public and in particular, students, future scientists, engineers and astronauts,” he said.  

People can book an appointment through SpaceModel Museum’s Facebook or by emailing proachmodels@gmail.com.