All Stories

Our conservation team had the pleasure of hosting Alan Eustace, former Google executive, engineer, and stratospheric explorer, this month in the Emil Buehler Conservation Laboratory. Eustace and his StratEx team are well known for their three world records including one for the highest altitude jump at 41,422 meters (135,899 feet) in 2014. The adventurer was in town giving a lecture about his historic jump and to donate to the Museum the suit, life support, and balloon equipment module he used during the jump.

We’re gearing up for one of our busiest times of the year—the holidays! Our team of Visitor Services staff love to talk to visitors during this time. We enjoy learning where you’re visiting from and what made you add our Museum to your already impressively full itinerary. You can find us at the Welcome Center in blue vests, eager to hear your stories.

Apollo artifacts have begun to receive increased scrutiny in light of recent discussions about returning humans to the Moon and the upcoming 50^th anniversary of the historic Apollo missions. What did astronauts of the 1960s and 1970s bring back from the Moon? What was left behind? And how can we verify the authenticity of any of those objects if they have been or will be recovered?

I’ve done a lot of “cool” things as an educator at this Museum: performed a solar system dance with Miss America, chatted with astronauts, and given people their first awe-inspiring views through a telescope. But I have to say, my most recent experience was truly out of this world. On Monday, October 19, 2015, I participated in the second  Astronomy Night at the White House. This event is designed to get youth excited about astronomy, space exploration, science, and engineering. 

A few weeks ago we made a huge announcement that our Explainers Program would be expanding. The exciting news made us ponder: What does it mean to be an Explainer? So we sat down with two of them to find out.

Only a few short months after I began my job as coordinator of the Explainers Program at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, the opportunity to help create a new program was on my desk. 

American Archives Month kicks off in September with Ask An Archivist Day on Twitter. In preparation, our archivists answered some serious (and not so serious) questions. Discover how they became archivists, how they work with our staff, and what songs would be on the National Air and Space Museum Archives soundtrack if one existed.

If you visit the museum and step into the "Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall," you are in one of the most difficult spaces of the museum for our designers. There are many challenges faced by the design team in planning the hall's layout and contents. 

I never would have guessed I’d spend the summer building a spacesuit. It isn’t exactly your typical internship. But with a lot of “spare” parts generously donated to the Museum by the manufacturer, ILC Dover, there’s a spacesuit just begging to be assembled. I spent weeks figuring out how to put this suit together, and with more than 400 parts in the collection, it’s not as simple as you might think.

You can help. Conservators at the Emil Buehler Conservation Laboratory are working to restore the original, 11-foot studio model of the USS Enterprise, used in all 79 episodes of the television series Star Trek, to its appearance from August of 1967. We are looking for first-hand, primary source photos or film of the ship’s early years. Images of the model during production or on public display anytime between 1964 and 1976 will help conservators determine the model’s exact configuration at different stages of its journey.