SAN ANTONIO -- Over the past nine years, the Challenger Learning Center located on Brooks City-Base has "flown" space missions with an estimated 90,000 kids.

As the hands-on space program celebrates the accomplishments of the Apollo 11 crew and their historic landing on the moon, those in charge wonder what the future will bring.

"Today is the last mission in this building," said Sheila Klein, the center's executive vice president for operations.

Klein said the center's mission is in danger of being permanently grounded if they can't raise enough money to move to a new location. The current building the center is housed in will be demolished next month. It is in the way of progress. New Braunfels Street is being expanded and will now continue through Brooks City-Base, paving right over the center.

"We will go into a holding pattern, or let's say an orbiting pattern, until we find a new landing site," Klein said.

The Challenger Center has found a new home, but they don't have enough funds to move. Flight Director Bill Merrill said the center's mission will continue, but it won't be the same experience.

"We're going to have about a year where we operate out of a smaller building and we go out to schools and do programs with them," Merrill said.

While educators will still be able to teach kids about space travel and get them excited about math, science, and engineering, not having the use of the facility's simulators and other life-like tools will take away form the experience.

"It will not be able to duplicate what we have here with the simulator, the space station and the mission control," Merrill said. "But, it will at least give us a program we can do with students out in the schools across the city."

The Challenger Center is an invaluable teaching tool for educators according to Merrill. The students who go through the program get to apply what they learn in school to real world experiences like running a Space Shuttle mission. They hope to continue their mission to inspire the young minds who could become future astronauts.

"We think maybe now around the mid 2030s will be when humans actually step onto the planet Mars," Merrill said. "I'll be too old then, but it could very well be that one of the kids we see here today could be one of those Mars astronauts."