Being Discovery’s Curator

A few short months before the COVID-19 pandemic began, I took over responsibility for one of the Smithsonian’s top five most iconic artifacts—Space Shuttle Discovery (the other four, to me, being those lovable pandas at the Zoo, Dorothy’s sparkling slippers at American History, a huge blue diamond, and maybe that aircraft the brothers from Ohio made). My curatorial career does not lack personal or professional highlights, but as a child of the 1980s, this meant something because it was our spacecraft. Through elementary school and beyond, I witnessed the highs and devastating lows of the program. I even skipped class in college to watch John Glenn’s STS-95 flight in an utterly packed room at the University of Michigan’s Student Union. Becoming Discovery’s curator wouldn’t make me unique (I owe a great debt to my predecessor, emerita curator, Dr. Valerie Neal), especially since there are three other space shuttle orbiters being cared for at other fine museums. What makes my job truly special, what people from my hairdresser to the kids on my sons’ hockey teams tell me is “the coolest job ever,” is how I appreciate the orbiter as a machine built by human hands, inscribed with an incredible history, that I now get to tell our millions of visitors.

So, what made my January 2022 visit to the Smithsonian’s space shuttle orbiter in the McDonnell Space Hangar of the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center so different from countless previous visits? For starters, I got to go inside the orbiter! Of course, I had seen Discovery before, even from the inside, but during this first visit as its curator, bits of my background arose in mind that connected me more closely to the artifact. My grandfather on my mother’s side, Louis LaManes, was a great storyteller. His long monologue-type tales entranced me, most often when they were stories about machines or his work. He had an incredible selection of tools in his basement, kept in a work area that always smelled oily and metallic. He spent his career as an electrician for Detroit Edison, going into people’s homes and fixing wiring. My family says I talk just like him. My dad, on the other hand, is a machinist, having started his own tool and die business in Toledo, Ohio, when I was just a kid and space shuttle flights were in their early days. Even today, I can walk into his machine shop, now run by my older brother, and appreciate the crafting of metals into parts for other machines—little metal scraps all over the floor. When I examine objects as a curator, such as the IMAX camera used to capture iconic documentaries filmed by astronauts, I dwell on the marks along the metal showing where it was cut and milled. That all fed into my senses going back inside Discovery, as it was now my turn as the child and grandchild of people who worked with their hands, to appreciate this amazing technological creation.

In late January of this year, I joined a team of orbiter engineers and Museum colleagues to look at Discovery closely from the inside, performing an inspection not unlike what you might do yearly with your car. This vehicle is not a mid-sized sedan or high-end racecar, however. It spent 365 days off our planet!

Our inspection, a COVID-delayed annual inspection of the engine compartment for hydraulic fluid leaks, became an opportunity to crawl (actual crawling is required) around in other areas. Somehow, in our years of filming television programs and scanning the orbiter for its 3D model, we never thought to record our work for ourselves. To document the orbiter’s condition, provide instructional videos for staff, educational programs for our docent guides, and probably a thousand other things, we brought our in-house filming crew along to cover the work from start to finish. My talented colleagues from Education and Special Events brought their 4K HD cameras along and captured views of nearly every surface, inside and out. We’ll now have our own library of videos to share with you for years to come. And we did this to protect Discovery. Museums typically do NOT like interacting with artifacts. But sometimes we have our reasons, and can turn them into opportunities, with planning and caution, to yield a library of material and avoid crawling around inside, risking damage, every single time we want something new.

But let’s get back to those fluid leaks, the real reason for this visit to Discovery. While we cannot share images of the findings (there are some sensitive technologies in the area of the orbiter that the government keeps restricted), I can say that we found more leaks than we had hoped. The engine compartment is a tangle of pipes, metal beams, and wiring, and not to be entered without some near-acrobatic abilities. Hydraulic fluid coursed through flown aircraft and spacecraft like blood through veins, and just because lines are drained after a vehicle is decommissioned does not mean the fluids are completely gone. Over time, loose caps and aging can allow the remaining fluid to slowly drip out. You’ll notice we even keep small absorbent pads under some aircraft for this reason. In the almost three years since we were last able to inspect Discovery, a few small puddles accumulated inside the engine compartment and dripping areas were noticeable. Thankfully, the issues were not so severe that they could not be cleaned up. The sources of the leaks were repaired, padded, and wrapped. Next time around, we’ll check those repairs, remove padding no longer needed, and check for new leaks. This process of review will continue for years to come as we continue to care for the most flown space shuttle orbiter.

Like any artifact in the Smithsonian’s care, Discovery is no more my space shuttle orbiter than it is yours: it belongs to us all. I happen to be the fortunate soul who serves as its guardian for a time, making sure those fluid leaks don’t cause any damage and providing insight into what Discovery is as an artifact. Astronauts can recount what it was like as an operational vehicle: it safely carried 183 astronauts — Americans, Australians, Britons, Canadians, French, Germans, Italians, Japanese, Russians, Spanish, Swedes, Swiss, a Saudi prince, senators, Christians, Muslims, Jews, men, women — to and from space over 39 missions. This time of year is a memorable one for all of them, in fact. March 9, 2022, is the 11th anniversary of Discovery’s last landing back on Earth (STS-133), and in April, the Museum will commemorate the 10th anniversary of Discovery’s arrival at the Smithsonian. It is such a privilege to be connected to these people and events through a single artifact.

Today, Discovery smells and feels like many other artifacts. There’s a dryness to the air inside, except in the payload bay where a scent of space still lingers. It’s a noticeable scent, something like a mix of plastic and metal. Mid-deck lockers are empty of their contents, surfaces have signs of bumps and nicks from space work, switches stand static in their last positions, and there are no sounds other than your heart pounding in your ears because of how amazing it feels to be there. The space is obviously designed for orbit, not 1-G, so getting up and down ladders, through small passages, and crawling along the padded ramp to the airlock and payload bay is clearly meant for floating people. Bruises on my legs proved it is not an easy trek. So, when people ask, “what’s it like in there,” my honest response is always going to be “utterly mind-blowing.” I know my grandfather and father would understand why those surfaces, textures, and smells mean something more to me, a kid from Michigan who watched a magical machine go to space and who now ensures future generations get to see it with their own eyes.

Jennifer Levasseur, PhD, is a Museum Curator in the Space History department at the National Air and Space Museum.