{"id":44148,"date":"2025-07-30T00:08:50","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T16:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/smithsonian-air-and-space-opens-halls-for-milestone-and-future-artifacts\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T00:08:50","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T16:08:50","slug":"smithsonian-air-and-space-opens-halls-for-milestone-and-future-artifacts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/smithsonian-air-and-space-opens-halls-for-milestone-and-future-artifacts\/","title":{"rendered":"Smithsonian Air and Space opens halls for \u201cmilestone\u201d and \u201cfuture\u201d artifacts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Air and Space Museum welcomed the public into five more of its renovated galleries on Monday, including two showcasing spaceflight artifacts. The new exhibitions shine modern light on returning displays and restore the museum\u2019s almost 50-year-old legacy of adding objects that made history but have yet to become historical.<\/p>\n

Visitors can again enter through the \u201cBoeing Milestones of Flight Hall,\u201d which has been closed for the past three years and has on display some of the museum\u2019s most iconic items, including John Glenn\u2019s Friendship 7 Mercury capsule and an Apollo lunar module.<\/p>\n

From there, visitors can tour through the adjacent \u201cFutures in Space,\u201d a new gallery focused on the different approaches and technology that spaceflight will take in the years to come. Here, the Smithsonian is displaying for the first time objects that were recently donated by commercial spaceflight companies, including items used in space tourism and in growing the low-Earth orbit economy.<\/p>\n

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\"a<\/p>\n

The artifacts are iconic, but the newly reopened Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall at the National Air and Space Museum is all new.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cWe are thrilled to open this next phase of exhibitions to the public,\u201d said Chris Browne, the John and Adrienne Mars Director of the National Air and Space Museum, in a statement. \u201cReopening our main hall with so many iconic aerospace artifacts, as well as completely new exhibitions, will give visitors much more to see and enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other three galleries newly open to the public are devoted to aviation history, including the \u201cBarron Hilton Pioneers of Flight,\u201d \u201cWorld War I: The Birth of Military Aviation,\u201d and the \u201cAllan and Shelley Holt Innovations Gallery.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s new is not yet old<\/h2>\n

Among the artifacts debuting in \u201cFutures in Space\u201d are a Merlin engine and grid fin that flew on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Sian Proctor\u2019s pressure suit that she wore on the private Inspiration4 mission in 2021, and a mockup of a New Shepard crew module that Blue Origin has pledged to replace with its first flown capsule when it is retired from flying.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the museum first opened back in 1976 and people came here and saw things like the Apollo command module and Neil Armstrong\u2019s spacesuit, or really anything related to human spaceflight, at that point it was all still very recent,\u201d said Matt Shindell, one of the curators behind \u201cFutures in Space,\u201d in an interview with collectSPACE.com. \u201cSo when you would come into the museum, it wasn\u2019t so much a history of space but what\u2019s happening now and what could happen next. We wanted to have a gallery that would recapture that feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of being themed around a single program or period in history, the new gallery invites visitors to consider a series of questions, including: Who decides who goes to space? Why do we go? And what will we do when we get there?<\/p>\n

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\"a<\/p>\n

Curators designed \u201cFutures in Space\u201d around a list of questions, including \u201cWhy go to space?\u201d On display is a pressure suit worn by Sian Proctor on the Inspiration4 mission and a 1978 NASA astronaut \u201cTFNG\u201d T-shirt.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cWe really wanted the gallery to be one that engaged visitors in these questions and that centered the experience around what they thought should be happening in the future and what that would mean for them,\u201d said Shindell. \u201cWe also have visions of the future presented throughout the gallery, including from popular culture\u2014television shows, movies and comic books\u2014that have explored what the future might look like and what it would mean for the people living through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is why the gallery also includes R2-D2, or rather a reproduction of the \u201cStar Wars\u201d droid as built by Adam Savage of Tested. In George Lucas\u2019 vision of the future (\u201ca long, long time ago\u201d), Astromech droids serve as spacecraft navigators, mechanics, and companion aides.<\/p>\n

Beyond the artifacts and exhibits (which also include an immersive 3D-printed Mars habitat and Yuri Gagarin\u2019s training pressure suit), there is a stage and seating area at the center of \u201cFutures.\u201d<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cI think of it as a TED Talk-style stage,\u201d said Shindell. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping to bring in people from industry, stakeholders, people who have flown, people who are getting ready to fly, and people who have ideas about what should be happening to come and talk to visitors from that stage about the same questions that we\u2019re asking in the gallery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Modernized \u201cMilestones\u201d<\/h2>\n

The artifacts presented in the \u201cBoeing Milestones of Flight\u201d are mostly the same as they were before the hall was closed in 2022. The hall underwent a renovation in 2014 ahead of the museum\u2019s 40th anniversary, so its displays did not need another redesign.<\/p>\n

Still, the gallery looks new due to the work done surrounding the objects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is new for the \u2018Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall\u2019 is, at some level, most noticeably the floor and media elements,\u201d said Margaret Weitekamp, curator and division chair at the National Air and Space Museum, in an interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a wonderful 123-foot (37-meter) media band that goes across the front of the mezzanine, and we have 20 different slide shows that work as a digest of what you\u2019ll find in the new galleries throughout the building,\u201d said Weitekamp. \u201cSo as people come into the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall, they\u2019ll be greeted by that and get a taste of what they\u2019re going to see inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there is the new flooring. In the past, the hall had been lined in maroon or dark gray carpet. It is now a much lighter-color terrazzo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really brightens up the room,\u201d Weitekamp told collectsPACE.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, you\u2019ll notice that as you are going up and down the hallways, there are medallions embedded in the floor that display quotes from significant aviation and spaceflight figures. So we\u2019ve been able to put some quotes from Carl Sagan, Sally Ride, and Chuck Yeager into the floor,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

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\"the<\/p>\n

The pattern on the floor of the Boeing Milesones of Flight Hall is the pulsar-based map to Earth\u2019s solar system that was mounted to the Pioneer and Voyager probes, now updated for 2026.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Visitors should also pay attention to what look like lines of dashes converging at the hall\u2019s center. The design is an update to a NASA graphic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a revised version of the pulsar map from Pioneer 10 and 11 and the Voyager interstellar record,\u201d said Weitekamp, referring to the representation of the location of Earth for any extraterrestrial species that might discover the probes in the future. \u201cThe map located Earth\u2019s solar system with relationship to 14 pulsars.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft were launched, astronomers didn\u2019t know that pulsars (or rotating neutron stars) slow down over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we worked with a colleague of ours to make it a map to our solar system as would be accurate for 2026, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the museum\u2019s building and the 250th birthday of the nation,\u201d Weitekamp said.<\/p>\n

Thirteen open, eight to go<\/h2>\n

Monday\u2019s opening followed an earlier debut of eight reimagined galleries in 2022. Also open is the renovated Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater, which joins the planetarium, the museum store, and the Mars Caf\u00e9 that were reopened earlier.<\/p>\n

\n

\"the<\/p>\n

The redesigned north entrance to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum opened to the public on Monday, July 28, 2025.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cWe are nearing the end of this multi-year renovation project,\u201d said Browne. \u201cWe look forward to welcoming many more people into these modernized and inspiring new spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight more exhibitions are scheduled to open next year in time for the 50th anniversary of the National Air and Space Museum. Among those galleries are three that are focused on space: \u201cAt Home in Space,\u201d \u201cNational Science Foundation Discovering Our Universe,\u201d and \u201cRTX Living in the Space Age Hall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Admission to the National Air and Space Museum and the new galleries is free, but timed-entry passes, available from the Smithsonian\u2019s website, are required.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National Air and Space Museum welcomed the public into five more of its renovated galleries on Monday, including two showcasing spaceflight artifacts. The new exhibitions shine modern light on returning displays and restore the museum\u2019s almost 50-year-old legacy of adding objects that made history but have yet to become historical. Visitors can again enter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[509,9549,9550,1798,4472,9551,9552,3167,4849,4029,316],"class_list":["post-44148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-origin","tag-boeing-milestones-of-flight-hall","tag-futures-in-space","tag-inspiration4","tag-national-air-and-space-museum","tag-reimagined-galleries","tag-renovation","tag-smithsonian","tag-space-exploration","tag-space-history","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44148"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}