The Neil Armstrong spacesuit statues are headed to new homes in museums around the country. Discover if a statue is on display at a museum near you.
America’s Favorite Pastime Meets History’s Greatest Adventure
In the summer of 2019, your hometown MLB ballpark may have been home to one of 15 replica statues of Neil Armstrong’s iconic spacesuit as we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing.
Apollo 11 was the collective achievement of 400,000 individuals working together towards a common goal. To highlight this national effort, the Museum brought a piece of Apollo to Americans across the country. As our national pastime, baseball provides countless exciting moments for millions of Americans every year and MLB ballparks were the perfect venues for new generations to learn more about that summer night 50 years ago.
15 MLB teams from around the country displaied the Neil Armstrong spacesuit statue:
- Atlanta Braves
- Boston Red Sox
- Chicago Cubs
- Cleveland Indians
- Cincinnati Reds
- Colorado Rockies
- Detroit Tigers
- Houston Astros
- Minnesota Twins
- New York Yankees
- Pittsburgh Pirates
- San Francisco Giants
- Seattle Mariners
- Tampa Bay Rays
- Washington Nationals
Visitors were able to scan the suits with their mobile device to unlock exclusive content about the Apollo 11 mission and shared their photos with the statues on Twitter and Instagram using #SnapTheSuit.
On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility, and humans stepped foot on the Moon for the first time. With that historic achievement, Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins became American heroes and earned international acclaim. The Apollo program remains the only time in history that humans have set foot on another celestial body. Apollo at the Park celebrates the astronauts who took our first small steps beyond Earth and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who worked together to make one giant leap for all humankind
As part of a Kickstarter to conserve and digitize Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit, and put it back on display for the first time in over a decade, the spacesuit was 3D scanned. Those scans were used to create an authentic replica of the suit to give ballpark visitors a look at the suit’s many intricate details.
Apollo-Themed Activities at Select Ballparks
- Washington Nationals: Apollo Night, presented in collaboration with the Museum, on July 5, 2019
- Cincinnati Reds: Apollo themed game on July 18, 2019
- Minnesota Twins: Moon landing celebration on July 20, 2019
- New York Yankees: Apollo Day on July 20, 2019
- San Francisco Giants: Apollo 11 features on July 20, 2019
- Seattle Mariners: Apollo Night on July 20, 2019
- Houston Astros: Apollo 11 Night on July 22, 2019
Apollo at the Park is made possible through the generous support of The Hillside Foundation - Allan and Shelley Holt.
Space and Baseball?
In the late 1950s, workers at the U.S. Naval Air Material Center in Philadelphia took to a makeshift field in some interesting uniforms -- B.F. Goodrich Mark IV spacesuits. The game was staged as a flexibility demonstration for the spacesuit. The final score of the baseball game is unknown, but the Mark IV would evolve to become the original Project Mercury spacesuit, a definite home run!
Did You Know?
A ballpark stadium seat is roughly the same size as the Apollo 11 capsule seat that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins sat in for 3 days on their journey to the moon.
The Apollo 11 landing site, Tranquility Base, and the lunar area that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored is roughly the size of a baseball diamond.
