Exhibitions

Dramatic landscapes of the Moon captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). 

The Air Transportation gallery was renovated and replaced with the America by Air exhibition in 2007.

Standing at the end of a runway, Jeffrey Milstein captured images of aircraft moments before landing. Carefully positioned and using a high-resolution digital camera, he photographed them from below as they streak past at speeds up to 175 miles per hour. 

Forty years ago, the Moon received its first human visitors. On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle landed, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface. To celebrate this 40th anniversary, this exhibition presents a view of the Apollo journeys through the eyes of the first artist to visit another world.

Apollo to the Moon told the historic story of human exploration of the Moon by the United States.

At the Controls gave visitors an opportunity to view the cockpits of a number of the aircraft and spacecraft in the National Air and Space Museum collections. Many of these historically significant craft are one of a kind, others are well known, even by non-aviation buffs, for significant events in mankind's travel through air and space history.

This gallery depicted the computer revolution in aviation and space. Seven exhibit areas, including many "hands-on" interactive computers, illustrated the primary applications of the computer in aerospace: Design, Aerodynamics, Computer-Aided Manufacture, Flight Testing, Air Operations, Flight Simulators and Space Operations.

Artist Michael Benson manipulates extraordinary images of the Solar System from NASA and other planetary databases in order to present what our eyes might see if we could visit these spectacular places ourselves.

This exhibition outlines the history of business aviation, the types of aircraft and airports used in private business travel, and the contributions of business travel to the field of aviation.

Earth from Space explained how satellite imagery is gathered and used to expand our understanding of life on Earth. Much like the pictures that appear on an ordinary computer monitor or television screen, satellite data are made up of pixels, or individual picture elements.