CHILDREN can zoom off into space with robots, a spaceman's suit, space age furniture and fantastic fashions for a journey through the cosmos.

As well as discovering when humans are likely to land on Mars, youngsters can make their own first steps into space, take a close look at music, film, fashion and literature - from Ziggy Stardust to Star Wars.

The Space Age: Exploration exhibition is an exciting display of items and artefacts exploring how the fascination with space has developed, from the emergence of astronomy around 2000BC to NASA's plans to put humans on Mars.

The exhibition at the Museum of Childhood has something for every space enthusiast including a piece of a Mars Meteorite, an original Cosmonaut Suit belonging to Russia's Yuri Gidzenko, an Indo-Persian celestial globe showing stars and constellations, a model of SpaceShipOne, packets of NASA space food, and a gravity defying pen.

The exhibition shows how the space age' feel filtered into homes in the 60s and 70s with fabric designs by Eddie Squires, a 1968 Pastilli chair by Eero Aarnio, 1964 lunar wallpaper designed by Michael Clarke and an original Mathmos lava lamp.

Youngsters will wow at the Eagle Eyes sunglasses, and pieces of original Star Wars merchandise and prototypes, classic 50s and 60s Japanese tin robots, flying saucers, rockets and moon explorers.

Classic TV show merchandise from Space 1999, Doctor Who, Thunderbirds, and Star Trek will also be on show.

The Space Age: Exploration exhibition is at the Museum of Childhood, until next April.

V&A Museum of Childhood, Cambridge Heath Road, London. Nearest tube: Bethnal Green. Tel: 8983 5200