A NEW visitor centre which is hoped will inspire the scientists of the future opened on Monday.

The Knutsford Guardian was one of the first to see Jodrell Bank’s new £3 million attraction during a press preview last week.

The visitor centre includes an interactive discovery centre, a pavilion for exhibitions, a cafe overlooking the Lovell Telescope and an entrance building modelled on the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Project bosses hope the revamp will eventually quadruple the number of visitors the observatory welcomes each year.

In recent years, Jodrell Bank has attracted about 82,000 visitors a year, and the new target is to boost this to 325,000 within five years.

Dr Teresa Anderson, the centre’s director, said: “Everyone is aware of Jodrell Bank’s heritage, but we want people to connect people to the live science which happens here and the discoveries which are made here.

“Increasingly we’re going to have scientists from all around the world coming here. It’s going to be a hub of activity.”

Jodrell Bank is world famous for the Lovell Telescope, which played a leading role in the Space Race in the 1950s and 1960s, and remains at the forefront of astrophysics.

Teresa said the first thing most visitors ask is what the telescope is doing.

The discovery centre aims to answer that question, with interactive displays illustrating how it works and is able ‘see the invisible’ by picking up radio signals from galaxies, black holes and exploded stars.

Other highlights include a camera which allows you to see in infrared and an infinity chamber which shows multiple copies of yourself and others to illustrate Jodrell’s research on parallel universes.

You can touch a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite which crashlanded in Argentina 4,000 years ago, and experience the Big Bang in a sound chamber.

“That’s the sound of the first million years of the universe compressed,” said Dr Tim O’Brien, reader in astrophysics at the University of Manchester.

Jodrell Bank’s original visitor centre was built in the 1960s but was knocked down in 2003.

Since then tourists have had to make do with an interim visitor site.

Tim added: “We can now do some amazing things we’ve been struggling to do for the past few years.”

The new centre has also meant the Jodrell Bank team has been able to expand.

There is now a classroom and two full-time education staff on hand for school visits as well as an exhibition and events manager and marketing officer.

But Jodrell Bank bosses are remaining tightlipped about the extra income expected.

Teresa said: “All I can say is that the business plan works and it makes the centre sustainable.

“We’re taking a business approach rather than a charity approach, but we’ll be not-for-profit – the aim is to inspire scientists of the future.”