Getaways

Air & Space Museum readies for a relaunch

BY DESTINY HERBERS and EKATERINA PECHENKINA

Capital News Service

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum will partially reopen to the public on Oct. 14, featuring eight new and renovated galleries along with the Albert Einstein Planetarium and a new Mars Cafe.

The museum’s flagship location, on the National Mall, closed to the public in March as part of a seven-year major renovation that began in 2018. The massive project, projected to cost $900 million, includes redesigning all exhibitions, building family care rooms and classrooms, and completely refacing the stone exterior of the building.

At a media preview on Thursday, Christopher Browne, John and Adrienne Mars director of the National Air and Space Museum, said the museum will be operating at roughly 50% capacity because the National Mall entrance will not reopen with the facility’s west wing.

“Even if the code said, ‘Sure, pack them in shoulder-to-shoulder,’ we wouldn’t want to do that, because it would ruin the experience,” Browne said.

The museum will feature interactive and digital experiences, as well as hundreds of new artifacts, including the WR-3 air racer built by Neal Loving, the first African American certified to race airplanes, and a T-38 flown by Jackie Cochran, the first woman to break the sound barrier.

“Since the time the museum opened in 1976, a lot has changed,” Browne said. “The aviation and aerospace world has changed incredibly, and who’s participating in it has changed. It’s become a much more diverse and inclusive space that we want to celebrate.”

Expansions of existing exhibits focused on making storytelling accessible and available to those with physical impairments, Browne said, through the introduction of tactile models and places to plug hearing-assistive devices into most interactive displays.

Exhibitions opening next week include “Destination Moon,” where visitors can stand face to face with Neil Armstrong’s A-7L lunar spacesuit from his first step onto the Moon. From the Apollo 11 mission, the exhibit also includes astronaut survival kits, tactile models of the F1 engines and Armstrong’s spacesuit gloves.

“Part of the benefit we have from being half to go is we’re going to learn. We want to hear from our visitors about what’s working… especially from folks who may not have mobility or vision or hearing,” Browne said.

In the Kenneth C. Griffin Exploring the Planets Gallery, visitors can simulate standing on the surface of other planets, surrounded by two immersive curved screens, and practice directing a rover across the surface of Mars.

“We are living right now in the golden age of planetary exploration, and this gallery is capturing it as best as possible,” said Robert A. Craddock, planetary geologist and the curator for the gallery, who has worked at the museum for 34 years. Ever since Craddock watched the Apollo 8 astronauts take off to the Moon on television, he’s been inspired to get involved in planetary science.

“Today we get more data from the planets than we did in the first 15 years of space exploration. We are trying to capture that and bring it to the American public,” Craddock said.

The west end of the Air and Space Museum will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day except for Christmas Day starting Oct. 14. Visitors can reserve free, timed-entry passes on the museum’s website.

Ekaterina Pechenkina/Capital News Service The Kenneth C. Griffin Exploring the Planets Gallery, at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, examines the history and science of the planets.

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