Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
In November 2015, I traveled to Washington, DC for the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting, where I presented results from my doctoral work on Ganymede’s aurora. After the conference, I stayed in the city for a few more days and used the time to visit some of the places that had long been on my list, among them the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museumꜛ. My absolute highlight of that visit was the full-scale Hubble Space Telescope (HST) model, since my doctoral work actually relied on spectroscopic observations from Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). Seeing Hubble not as an abstract observatory where I got my data from, but as a large physical instrument in front of me was actually quite striking. I took several photographs during that visit which I’d like to share in this post.
Full-scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. My personal highlight of that visit. Taken in 2015.
The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum
Before turning to the photographs, a few words about the museum itself. The Smithsonian Institutionꜛ was established in 1846 from the bequest of James Smithson, a British scientist and mineralogist who had never visited the United States, but left his estate to the country to found an institution dedicated to the “increase and diffusion of knowledge”. Over time, the Smithsonian developed into a unique complex of museums, research centers, libraries, archives, and collections. It is therefore not a single museum, but a large scientific and cultural institution with a broad educational and research mission.
James Smithson by Henri-Joseph Johns, 1816. Smithson was a British scientist and mineralogist who left his estate to the United States to found the Smithsonian Institution, an institution which would eventually shape the history of science and culture in the country. Source: Wikimedia Commonsꜛ (license: public domain).
The National Air and Space Museumꜛ in Washington, DC is one part of that larger Smithsonian system. It opened on July 1, 1976, and was created to preserve, study, and exhibit the history of aviation and spaceflight. Together with its second site, the Udvar-Hazy Centerꜛ in Virginia, it houses one of the world’s most important collections of aircraft, spacecraft, satellites, rockets, and related artifacts. What makes the museum so impressive is not only the scale of that collection, but also the way in which it brings together more than a century of flight history and the early history of space exploration in a form that can be experienced directly by walking through its halls.
The entrance of the National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The large sculpture in front is called “Ad Astra” and was created by artist Richard Lippold in 1976. It consists of a series of stainless steel rods that form, in my view, a kind of abstract representation of the trajectory of a rocket or spacecraft. The shafts end in a pointed tip, penetrating a triple star-like cluster near its apex. Source: Wikimedia Commonsꜛ (license: CC BY-SA 3.0).
My visit in 2015
Below are some of the photographs I took during that visit. They are not meant to be a comprehensive tour of the museum, but rather a selection of objects and displays that I found especially memorable. I have grouped them into thematic sections, but they are not necessarily in the order in which I encountered them during the visit.
The great hall
The first strong impression was simply the main hall, which opened upward into a large, bright interior with a glass front and suspended aircraft and spacecraft all around. What struck me most was how many different eras of aviation and spaceflight were brought together in one hall: Early aircraft, jet age machines, rockets, satellites, and spacecraft, some standing on the floor, others hanging overhead. The whole hall functioned as a kind of three-dimensional timeline of flight history, with the earliest machines at one end and the most recent ones at the other. It was a powerful way of conveying the rapid pace of technological change and the diversity of human achievements in aviation and spaceflight.
Inside the Boeing 747 cockpit
One of the highlights of that hall was the front section of a retired Northwest Boeing 747, which visitors could enter. From there, it was possible to look directly into the cockpit.
Apollo-Soyuz docking hardware
Another memorable object was the docking hardware associated with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. That 1975 mission brought together an American Apollo spacecraft and a Soviet Soyuz in orbit, becoming one of the clearest symbolic gestures of cooperation between the two superpowers in the history of the Cold War.
A satellite suspended overhead
The large white dish suspended in the main hall could be a model of the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, but I am not sure. The Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to pass through the asteroid belt, marking the early era of deep-space exploration.
Rockets on display
Several historically important ballistic rockets were also on display. One of them was a model of the V-2 and the WAC Corporal. The V-2 was developed in Nazi Germany during the Second World War and later became an important point of departure for postwar rocket development. It was actually Werner von Braun, the lead engineer of the V-2 program, who later became a key figure in the American space program, despite his controversial past. The V-2 was the first long-range guided ballistic missile and the first human-made object to reach the edge of space, making it a significant milestone in the history of rocketry. The WAC Corporal, by contrast, was a much smaller American sounding rocket and became the first U.S. liquid-fueled sounding rocket.
Additionally, models of the Viking, Jupiter-C, and Vanguard rockets were shown side by side. Viking was an important early American sounding rocket, which paved the way for later orbital launch vehicles. Jupiter-C launched Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite, in 1958, and Vanguard was another early American launch vehicle developed for orbital missions. Together, these displays kind of summarize how quickly rocket technology developed in the mid twentieth century, pushed by the geopolitical competition of the Cold War and the space race.
Also on display was a Soviet SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missile, which was deployed in the late 1970s and became a major point of contention in the arms control negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union. The SS-20 was a mobile missile system that could carry multiple nuclear warheads and had a range of around 5,000 kilometers, making it a significant threat to Western Europe. Its deployment led to widespread protests and eventually contributed to the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) in 1987, which resulted in the elimination of an entire class of nuclear weapons.
The Hubble Space Telescope: My personal highlight
My personal highlight of the museum visit was the full-scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). As mentioned at the beginning, my doctoral work relied on spectroscopic observations from HST’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), with which we have been able to study the morphology and variability of Ganymede’s aurora. For me, seeing Hubble in this form had a deep impact because until then, I had mainly known it through papers, data products, and instrument documentation. Standing in front of it made its dimensions and construction much more concrete than I had expected. It was powerful to see that the data I had been working with came from a real physical instrument, which was built and launched into space by human beings. Of all the exhibits in the museum, this was the one that meant the most to me personally.
Human spaceflight
Another part of the museum focused on human spaceflight. Here the emphasis shifted from vehicles themselves to life in space: Pressure suits, a shuttle model, displays on everyday life aboard a space station, and the practical details of sleeping, exercising, eating, drinking, and using the toilet in orbit. I found this part especially interesting because it showed spaceflight not only as a technical problem of launch and transport, but also as the problem of how humans actually live and work in such an environment.
Among the exhibits were also concept and prototype models for future space vehicles. These included designs for surface vehicles intended for the Moon or Mars, as well as VentureStar, the proposed reusable single-stage-to-orbit successor concept that was never realized. I found these models interesting because they documented not only what was built, but also what was planned and imagined at the time.
Apollo
Another highlight of the museum was the section on the Apollo program. It included a command capsule, an analog control panel with its dense arrangement of switches and indicators, a capsule flight operations manual, and a lunar rover. Seeing these objects together gave a good sense of how compact, mechanical, and operationally complex the Apollo program actually was. Seeing the actual hardware also created a much closer connection to the history of that program than any textbook, documentary, or blockbuster movie could.
Early aviation
In another gallery, the central exhibits was the Wright brothers’ Flyer, associated with the first sustained, controlled, powered flight in 1903. In the context of the museum as a whole, it marked the beginning of a technological line that later extended to large modern aircraft and spaceflight.
Space exploration and planetary science
The museum also had a section on planetary exploration, with models of probes and landers as well as displays on the history of missions to the Solar System. Especially for me as a space scientist, it was interesting to see all those different missions and their hardware in one place. It was a good reminder of how much we have achieved as a species in terms of exploring our cosmic neighborhood, how far cooperation (and competition) have driven that exploration, and how much more there is still to discover.
Science fiction and the culture of spaceflight
One smaller exhibition area moved away from hardware and focused more on imagination and popular culture. There were displays on early rocket societies, science fiction, and visual representations of space travel, including material connected to Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Fritz Lang’s movie, Frau im Mond, on of the earliest science fiction films in history. I liked this section because it showed that ideas about space exploration were shaped not only by science and engineering, but also by fiction and imagination.
The planets and their moons at scale
Another part of the exhibition showed the planets and some of their moons at a common scale. Such displays are always useful because they make relative size differences much easier to grasp than textbook illustrations usually do. Seeing the terrestrial planets, the giant planets, and larger satellites in one shared scale made those proportions much more immediate.
Voyager and New Horizons
One of the most iconic spacecraft in the history of planetary exploration is the Voyager 1 and 2 pair, which launched in 1977 and have since traveled beyond the heliosphere into interstellar space. The museum had several models of Voyager on display (miniatures and full-scale replicas), which was a powerful reminder of how long those spacecraft have been in operation and how much they have contributed to our understanding of the outer planets and the interstellar medium. Voyager’s longevity and continued scientific return make it actually one of the most successful and enduring missions in the history of space exploration.
On the right of the photo above is New Horizons, the mission that later carried out the Pluto flyby and which gave us our first close-up views of that distant world. Seeing New Horizons in the same display as Voyager was a good reminder of how much progress we have made in space exploration over the past few decades, but also that human curiosity and the drive to explore continue to push us further and further.
The final stop
Like many museum visits, this one ended in the shop. After several hours of aircraft, rockets, probes, and spacecraft, that final room of books, models, and souvenirs was a predictable, but still fitting, conclusion to the visit.
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