All Stories

The Museum’s Lunar Module LM-2 represents a dilemma, at least for the current generation of Smithsonian curators and conservators. What stages of its history are most important, and how should it to be presented to the public?

One of our goals for this conservation project is to create a concrete timeline of the spacesuit’s condition and to document any historical repairs. To do that, we need your help. We’re looking for photos of the spacesuit from its national tour beginning in 1970, the gloves and helmet on later tours, and the spacesuit on display at the Smithsonian between 1971 and 1976.

“We know it will be a good ride,” Astronaut Neil Armstrong said. He was responding to well wishes from the NASA launch operations manager just 15 seconds before automatic sequence. And he was right. It was a good ride.

As the National Air and Space Museum gears up for its All Night at the Museum 40th anniversary celebration July 1-2, I can’t help but recall the night in July 1976 that I almost spent at the newly opened Museum — until the police found me and returned me to my parents, that is.

The studio model of the Star Trek starship Enterprise is now on exhibit in the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall. After taking it off exhibit in 2014, assembling a special advisory committee, examining it using x-ray radiography, searching out long-lost photos, and planning the work in great detail, months of hard work culminated in several weeks of painting, detail work, rewiring, and final assembly. In the end, the whole project was a tremendous collaboration.

For more than four decades, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum has celebrated the greatest achievements in aviation and space history.

I’m snatching moments to write this from Chile, sitting on the floor of the airport, or bouncing up winding mountain roads in a van. I’m here as an Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassador, with eight other ambassadors.

How do you keep time? We use an atomic clock in our exhibition Time and Navigation that is accurate to the tiniest fraction of a second and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Except, of course, when we need to account for a leap second—a second added to the clock to account for Earth’s slowing rotation. Curious how we added that second or how an atomic clock works? Find out in our newest blog post. 

In our exhibition Time and Navigation visitors can set their watches by a working cesium frequency standard, commonly known as an "atomic clock." Before the clock was installed, we needed the frequency standard to be calibrated to the national reference time at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, DC.

When visitors enter our Museum, many are awed by the number of artifacts that are on display. We’re often asked, “How do you manage to keep everything clean?” That is a terrific question, especially since there are more than 6,000 artifacts on display at any time on the floor or hanging overhead, with more being added each year. Cleaning and inspecting the artifacts is critical to preserving the Museum’s collection.