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At a ceremony held earlier this week at the annual Cruise Shipping Miami convention, the Grand Turk Cruise Center was presented with Porthole Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Award for “Best Interactive Cruise Exhibit” for its new attraction that pays tribute National Aeronautics & Space Administration’s Mercury space program and the historic 1962 splashdown of the Friendship 7 capsule off the island’s cost.
The 3,500-square-foot Splashdown! Grand Turk exhibit features amazing replicas unique to the Mercury space program, including a scaled 20-foot-tall Atlas rocket and a full-size, three-dimensional replica of astronaut John Glenn in spacesuit, and, of course, a detailed replica of the Friendship 7 capsule, which splashed into the Atlantic in 1962, a few short miles from the island of Grand Turk.
Opened in 2006, the Grand Turk Cruise Center is operated by Carnival Corporation & plc and hosts nearly 625,000 passengers annually
Pictured here at the ceremony are (from left): Porthole Editor-in-Chief Bill Panoff, Carnival Corporation & plc’s Director of Business Development David Candib and Senior Vice President of Port and Destination Development Giora Israel.