Space Village and NASA soar at Silicon Valley Comic Con 2017

The main show floor featured Silicon Valley Comic-Con's Space Village, where attendees could explore displays on topics ranging from laser communication to astrobiology.

Right through the front entrance to the main show floor was a model Virgin Galactic commercial spacecraft for space tourists. Hopefully we'll see some more interactive models at future SVCCs.

NASA came out in full force for SVCC, with several educational displays.

Poor Fred got emaciated after waiting forever in line to get autographs from the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" cast.

Curiosity is a NASA rover, deployed to Mars to determine whether the planet was ever habitable for microbial life.

An informational booth about NASA's Kepler and K2 missions. Kepler is a space observatory whose objective was to locate Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of sun-like stars....

... and it found quite a few of them!

In this simulation we can see particles that are evolving on their own inside this program. You can interact with them with your hands, the one on the left pushes the particles away and the one on the right attracts them.

As amazing as the photos from Mars rovers have been, their vision is rather limited for navigation. NASA Ames and the Jet Propulsion Lab are working on a helicopter that could scout ahead, helping the rovers navigate unpredictable terrain. No more rolling all the way to a cliff edge just to turn around.

At the Kids' Steam Lab, one of the more popular displays was NASA's collection of vintage tech.

Excuse me, which way to the gun show?

Nothing says, "Look, science!" like a plasma ball.

On Saturday, SVCC coincided with the worldwide March for Science, and some decided to participate in both. Or maybe they're just cosplaying as protesters?