Anyone remember an 80's kid's TV show where the main characters were puppets that flew a homemade spaceship?

I seem to remember that it was a serial attached to another program--you would only get like 5 minutes of program before ending in a cliffhanger. The puppets had block, ventriloquist-like heads and practical hands (I remember the hands always looking strange b/c they were huge compared to the character's heads and they never matched the skin tones: e.g. the Caucasian puppets looked like they were wearing white gloves and the African-American puppets wearing brown gloves). I remember two girl puppets (one African-American, one a red head) and a boy puppet. The girls had short bob haircuts and the blond boy always wore a red baseball cap—there may have been an African-American boy and a Hispanic girl who was always in a flowery dress and barrette as well. Although the main characters were puppets, they did interact with live people when they would land their makeshift spacecraft looking for whatever it was they were looking for--usually each other. The "spacecraft" looked like a tee-pee covered with wooden shingles and had a spoked bicycle wheel for the porthole window. I think the ship either had a periscope inside or was steered with bicycle handlebars--either way, there was something inside the ship that the puppets would grab with both hands to do something or other (hence the strange looking gloved hands). It's been driving me nuts that I can't remember anything else about the show. Please help save my sanity. Thanks.