The Smithsonian's Digitization Program Office takes you behind the scenes of how they captured a comprehensive 3D dataset of the largest museum artifact ever to be digitized: Space Shuttle Discovery

On October 29, 1998, John Glenn launched on his second spaceflight, 36 years after his historic 1962 flight on the Mercury Friendship 7 spacecraft. When John Glenn boarded the shuttle orbiter Discovery, now in the Museum’s collection and displayed at our Udvar-Hazy Center, he was 77 years old—the oldest person yet to venture into space.

Space Shuttle Enterprise, the first space shuttle orbiter ever built, was once displayed where Discovery is today. Despite both being part of the Space Shuttle program, the two served very different purposes and tell very different stories.

While the Discovery is hard to miss at the Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, the little-known details help tell the orbiter’s unique and important history.  

How the patches on Sally Ride’s flight jacket help tell her groundbreaking story of spaceflight.

When my STS-98 crew launched into orbit on February 7, 2001—the first human space launch of the millennium—I marked the milestone by carrying with me two personal mementos of the landmark Stanly Kubrick science fiction film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Aerospace pioneers make all kinds of new discoveries during their careers—some even find that special someone along the way.

Fifteen years after the Columbia tragedy, Michael D. Leinbach, Space Shuttle Launch Director, and Jonathan H. Ward, space historian, look back at the harrowing process of recovering the spacecraft.